Immanuel Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory (ft. Charles Lemert)

Here at the Sociology of Everything Podcast, we acknowledge the people of Ghana, Yarta, whose land this episode was mainly produced on, and whose past and present elders repair respects to. Hi, I'm Eric Sue. And I'm Louis Evers. And we're Lu and the Sue. And this is the Sociology of Everything Podcast. Brought to you by UniSA, the university that's amazingly based in the state of South Australia. You know, I was actually thinking overnight, there's probably a necessary thing to say, because if you haven't listened to like the first episode, you'll be like, "No, the university of South Africa is doing some really good podcasts." Yeah, why don't they have South African accents? So yeah, well now you know. So what's in the cards today, Eric? In this episode, we're going to do what we normally do. We're going to have a chat about an influential sociological concept. This one in particular was developed by the late American sociologist, Emmanuel Wallerstein. And when people hear Waller's scene's name in the field of sociology, they think of what concept? Well, systems theory. Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, it's like you think New York and you think pizza. Yeah, but it's not like he's been typecast or anything. It's that he came up with such an amazing idea and such an influential idea that unlike other sociologists or social theorists who come up with a few key terms or concepts, it's like this has become an entire field of study onto itself for many people. He keeps about it. And I should mention at the outset that we're not going to be able to cover every nook and cranny of this theory because he didn't just write one book about this idea. He wrote four. He wrote a four volume set. Each of those books is like 400 pages long. That's crazy, Louis. Like if I was 800 pages deep on a particular topic, and my publisher came to me and said, "Do you have another 800 pages left in you?" I would probably say no, I'm out. I don't know what else to say, but Wallerstein was like, yeah, I'm going to crush it. Yeah, that's fine. I think I'd be padding pretty hard. Long before I'd gotten to the first 800. So we're just going to focus on one piece by Wallerstein. It was an article that he published in the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. And this piece articulates a lot of the key points he makes about world systems theory. So one of the things to know about this piece, and Wallerstein's theory more broadly, is that he's focused on the system of capitalism. He's trying to help us understand it in a new way. And he does this by questioning the unit of analysis we usually use. When we analyze capitalism. Yeah, that's exactly right. You think about traditional understandings of capitalism and research about capitalism, and it generally takes a nation's state as the container of action that it's focused on. When it looks at who are the winners and losers of a capitalist system, who are the purchases, where things being produced, it's all within a certain national territory, a certain society that society defined in terms of a sovereign nation state. So what does that help us understand then, Louis? Why should we look beyond the nation's state for our understanding of capitalism? Well, the primary reason we should look beyond the nation state to understand capitalism is because one of the key things that Wallerstein's trying to get across is the fact that the way that capitalism develops in different nation states is impacted by the relationships they have with one another. Or it's impacted with the way capitalism operates across nation states. If we think about other traditional sociological accounts, like maybe Mac Vabe's account of capitalism, it really focuses on how the specific cultural setting of a certain nation state influences the variety of capitalism that occurs there. Yeah. So real systems theory can be contrasted with modernization theory. Yeah. So modernization theory holds that societies become capitalists when they buy into capitalist values, when they engage in capitalist practices. And this explains why there are differing economic systems in the world. Those societies that are capitalist have embraced capitalism. And those societies that haven't are not yet capitalist, but they Monday might be. Whereas Wallerstein offers a different take. Wallerstein believes that it's misleading to think that societies with different economic systems have nothing to do with one another, especially in the contemporary era. It's not just like these different nation states are all going through their own individual processes of development and modernization and some are moving further towards ideal capitalist states and some are doing other things. Wallerstein says to understand what's happening in each of these locations, what we need to focus on is the overarching system that connects them. And he thinks that's that overarching capitalist system. Yeah. Yeah. And that the inequalities of capitalism don't just occur within a society, within a nation state, they also occur between them as well. Yeah. That's a really interesting point because it actually connects back to that earlier point about how there are different types of economic systems developing in different parts of the world. And if we focus as Wallerstein suggests we should on the overarching system, it explains why that's happening. And it's to do with those inequalities. They're being produced by the overarching system. Capitalism isn't just producing these more more advanced or modern capitalist economies, it's also producing potentially less advanced economies. That's right. And so what he's trying to describe then here are a set of relationships that exist in the capitalist world system between places, societies, regions that have different characteristics and that fill different roles. Eric, I'd say that's the very core of the argument. For those students that don't know why that's both grown worthy and laughable, just wait, just wait. So Louis, you've mentioned the core, you've mentioned the periphery. Why are those terms significant? So essentially that's the terminology Wallerstein uses to describe the different parts of this world system that have a relationship with one another. So there are core aspects to the system and periphery aspects to the system, periphery units and core units. And the distinguishing feature between these two parts of the system is that Labor is divided across the entire world system. When we look outside of the nation state, we're not looking at the division of Labor where there's one suburb, where the working class are and another suburb where the wealthier people are and the goods are produced on one side of the city and you know bought and used on the other side of the city, we're stretching that across the world. And there are core parts of the world where the more high value, the more kind of fancy a part of the world system and the economic activity occurs, where the iPhones get bought and sold. And then there are other parts of the world, the peripheral parts where the lower value economic activity occurs. Yeah. So Wallerstein is trying to alert us where the money goes in the capitalist world system. Yeah. So when a good is produced, it might involve a lot of inputs. The raw materials might come from somewhere. The labor that's used to transform those raw materials into some product might be undertaken somewhere else. And then the item could be purchased in a totally different context. Yeah. And what Wallerstein is asking is where does the bulk of the money go? Where is the bulk of the profit for that item go? And you could think about it so clearly just in terms of any sort of like an electronic device, a computer or a smartphone. And if you think about that device from it being raw materials in the ground, those materials being mined and then fashioned into something that can be put into a machine, to that machine being produced, to that being shipped and sold somewhere, there is a whole lot of benefit and value that is generated by that entire system. But it's not equally shared across the whole production process. It's not. Yeah. I mean, chocolate is widely in many parts of the world. There are some places that grow cocoa beans more than others. But are the growers the ones who profit the most from the chocolate production and consumption process? No. So we're not. And the way to understand how that's the case is to use Wallerstein's World Systems Theory. And so Louis, let's talk about what are the key features of the core and of the periphery in Wallerstein's World Systems Theory? I think a good way to understand that is to think about what set of political, legal, economic conditions are conducive to having core production processes and periphery production processes. The core production processes, what you really need is a relatively strong and stable government that can do things like enforce patents and intellectual property law so that if you're selling a really expensive device, someone else can't just come in and rip it off and undercut you, you need a government that's going to have certain maybe trade systems and tariffs and things to protect you from people just flooding the market with cheaper products from overseas. You also need a set of laws and a political system that's going to give you a good consumer base who are going to be able to purchase your products so you might need relatively high living standards and wages and other things. And so this is a whole political environment of a core place in the world. And if we think about the world, we can think about places like the US or across Europe or maybe Australia. We could come back to Australia later maybe. But these are places that have this political context and so they allow businesses to operate in a highly profitable manner with these more expensive high-value parts of the entire production process which is spread across the world. So how do we contrast that then with the periphery? Well, sadly Eric, the periphery, I mean what do you want if you're trying to do something super cheaply, you're trying to like get the raw materials for a product in a very cheap manner, if you're a firm looking to set up your factory somewhere, you want low wage costs. So you need a government that doesn't have strong occupational health and safety standards. You need a government that's not going to impose lots of fines on you if you do the wrong thing if you're a bad corporate entity. You need a lot of competition between workers to constantly be driving down prices. You might need low environmental regulations and standards so that if your mind collapses or something happens you're not going to get in too much trouble. This is the legal and the political environment of the periphery where things can be done super cheaply because that part of the production process is the lower value part of the production process. If costs blow out in the periphery then all of a sudden the products you're trying to sell in the core are going to be super expensive. And so if it's not abundantly evident already the periphery experiences exploitation in the capitalist world system and it is at the hands largely of the core. And I should mention that Wallerstein's World Systems Theory is oftentimes also regarded as a type of dependency theory. Dependency theory helps us understand how the developed world and the developing world don't actually exist in a harmonious relationship because you might think that the developed nations are trying to improve the living standards of the developing world. That's the line we're oftentimes fed when aid is given to a particular place. It's thought to one day transform them into the developed nation right there's that dream that all developing nations have supposedly that they will one day become a super wealthy nation. And Wallerstein's World Systems Theory kind of takes that into account because it's important to note that the core and the periphery in Wallerstein's account these are dynamic positions. And what I mean by that is who is the core one day might be different from who is the core the next day. It's a position. So it's kind of like the bourgeoisie in Marxist system. He's not specifically mentioning specific people. He's mentioning a specific type of person. And so if like Jeff Bezos loses all of his money one day it's not like capitalism is over. The bourgeoisie is dead. Some one will take us place and it's the same idea with Wallerstein's World Systems Theory. And we can see that in how the production processes in the world shift about. They're like you said there will always be a need according to this theory for there to be somewhere where we can produce goods in a really cheap manner but that location has shifted over time. Yeah. And in fact there are a few reasons for that shift occurring that Wallerstein points towards. One being is what we've already discussed and that's the kind of legal framework. And in particular the ability that a sovereign state has of protecting its businesses to be kind of monopolies or quasi monopolies. And that's the ability that a state has to stop its businesses being in such intense competition with one another or face such intense competition that they drive one another's profits down. If they can stop that happening, if they can give them some government subsidies, if they can protect them otherwise, then they can keep those businesses being so profitable. And another interesting point he makes is that some production processes themselves just become lower value production processes as technology changes, as other thing changes. And he points to textiles as an example of this. Yes, it makes sense. Right. Clothing used to be made in the core. And now it does to some extent, but the bulk of clothing that people wear, the bulk of clothing that's consumed is produced in the periphery. Now at this point, it's worthwhile to ask if these two positions are it in the capitalist world system, do we just have the core and the periphery? No. Wallerstein also refers to the semi-preferent, which essentially is a part of the system that has some core-like processes, some core-like production processes and has some political structures that can help maintain businesses and protect them and stop them getting into kind of intense competition. But at the same time, has some periphery-like production processes as well? Yeah, the semi-preferies is what it sounds like. It's a mix of both the core and the periphery. But why does the semi-preferie exist? This actually leads us to a segment. We like to call say where we look at a quote in need of further explanation. Wallerstein writes, "One might make a good case that the world economy as an economy would function every bit as well without a semi-preferie. But it would be far less politically stable, far would mean a polarized world system." The existence of the third category means precisely that the upper stratum is not faced with the unified opposition of all the others because the middle stratum is both exploited and exploited. It's such an interesting quote. For me, what Wallerstein's saying here is that that semi-preferie is so essential for stability of the system. It's almost like your middle class. It gives the periphery something to look up towards. There's light at the end of the tunnel. You one day could exploit someone else. That's right. All right, Louis, so what are some take-home points here then? I think the main take-home point for me, and it's probably a broader point about dependency theory in general, is that when you look at your own situation and I live in Australia, which is a very affluent and wealthy part of the world, I need to constantly acknowledge that my lifestyle and the political and economic context in which I live is connected, is related to parts of the world where people's political and economic environment is not nearly as affluent. It doesn't provide them with nearly the same sort of life that I have. That's not an isolated thing. It's not like that country just has to develop. They have to go through their own process and modernize. It's like, no, my existence and what I get to have here is in some way creating or influencing that. It's producing someone else's less well-off life. This is connected to another feature of Wallerstein's account of World Systems Theory, which is that there's a link between capitalism and colonialism. It's not like these two things are separate. It's not like the spread of empire was somehow incidental or unaffecting of capitalism. He thinks that for the modern world system to have developed, for the capitalist world system to have developed, you needed the spread of empire because what is colonialism if not dispossession? And according to Wallerstein, that's what's occurring in the modern world system, dispossession. And it's systematized dispossession. Another implication of Wallerstein's work is how we conceptualize the phenomenon of globalization. In an earlier episode, Louis, we talked about the hyperglobalist position, which views globalization as just this contemporary phenomenon. Once the satellites go up, that means we have globalization hurry. That's the moment. Boom. But the implications of Wallerstein's World Systems Theory seem to date globalization back further. To at least the 16th century, and when this world system that we're describing, when this came about, when capitalism started to be spread across the world, for him, this modern period of globalization isn't just the increasing interconnection and independence of the world, like the hyperglobalist might look at it in a more kind of neutral and positive light. For him, globalization is the development of this world capitalist system. And with the spread of the capitalist world system, this then got rid of what he calls many systems, systems that are largely dependent on themselves. I don't involve much interchange with other places. And so now we exist in a world where we can't think of societies and isolation from one another. Now, I do want to mention here that Wallerstein before he died, along with a number of other social scientists, wrote about the possibility that something might be radically transforming about the capitalist world system, that it might be coming apart at the seams. We're not going to be able to cover that in this podcast unfortunately. In this episode, at least. That would have been a much better podcast. But hopefully, this is something you want to investigate after listening to this. Louis, it's a sound again. It's a sound of a segment we like to call when you know smart people know stuff. Where we invite smart people we know to talk about something. So welcome Charles Lambert. Charles is not only the author of countless books. He's not only the John C. Andrews, American professor of social theory at Wesley University, my alma mater and having held numerous positions at many institutions, like having been long-standing senior fellow at Yale University Center for Comparative Research. He's also my mentor. He's the person you can think or conversely blame for this podcast and me having an academic career. So thanks Charles so much for being on this podcast. You're welcome. Glad to be here. Good to see you. Been long. Yes indeed. Now Charles, you not only have written about Wallerstein's work, you not only have had a personal relationship with Wallerstein, you co-authored one of his final works before he unfortunately passed away a few years ago. And so I think you're a better place than anyone to let us know what we got wrong. Well, I just want to say a word or two about a manual himself. He was at first blush a kind of distant person or so it seems. But as the years went on, we grew closer and closer such that at the end, I miss being in his deathbed by a day or so. We really became quite close and then when he died, his wife Beatrice, I spent time with her until she lost life essentially to Alzheimer's. So it's a very treasured person in my life as well as, and this may seem strange, very much a mentor. I had two mentors. One way back in the day, someone you certainly are not doing a podcast on Alvin Gouldner, who was a kind of bad Marxist. Sounds like a challenge. But then a manual came to be that. Not because he was my teacher, just because I paid close attention to what he did and what he said. So turning to your question, I'd say there's only one thing principal saying you may have gotten a bit wrong. Give it to a child. No, I mean, to do it is a 30 minute or 20 minute talk. It may be you remain more mistakes if we talk longer. That's certainly out most certain to you, I think. Yeah, but I think you underestimate the the beginning of the modern world system as he understood it. It really began, he often short noted it as 1500. In other words, right in the heart of the beginning of world exploration, Americans think of Columbus. Y'all might think of Magellan, who I think stopped over in Australia on his way around the world. But his view was quite clear that and it's a lesson I took from him that those explorations, which we were taught in school were, you know, this very queen Isabella, whoever she was, was interested in the new world and sent these people off to do geographical science. It's nonsense. It was an economic program for the beginning. And there would not been a modern capitalism, according to Wallerstein and I agree with that, without those beginnings, which were avariciously capitalist those explorations around the world. And so the structure of the world system, first of all, he I'll come to this later, but that he he thought it began around in this period of exploration, but ended around a 1989-91 with the collapse of the Cold War and something different happened there. Briefly put, his view was that after that period we began to live in a multi-polar world and instead of a world dominated by a core state. But I think it helps a little bit to think of who these core states were. The first were the two Iberian nations, Portugal and Spain, one explored North America and of course Portugal took over Brazil and South America in that sense. But then there were others who followed, maybe 150 years later, you would say the Dutch in the 1770s, Dutch East India Company. Brant sort of peaked its head into that precious place, but it was quickly the United Kingdom before it was the United States after well really when when Winston Churchill had the big for land lease, borrowing tankers and weapons before the US could enter the war. So you had the series of core states and I think what I'm leading up to is that you made it sound like they saw the periphery as a kind of interesting marketplace. I may be unfair to what you said. But the core states, especially in the early days but through the American domination, were pure colonizers at first geographic colonizers but also by the time we got to the United States economic colonizers. So the periphery for them then and still now to a certain extent was that the periphery were those places that one way or another they dominated, sometimes in coercive way, sometimes in economic ways but always a mixture of both and that they provided two things, which you did mention, first of all cheap labor. And that still goes on. I mean it's fast disappearing. It was Vietnam for a while and now it's moved to other places in South Asia and there isn't a great deal that left except immigrants who come into the first United States and other primary nations in the world. So that was one and it was also resources. I mean we often forget that sub-Saharan Africa is still a wash with rich mineral products, some of which were necessary even for computers to be built as time went by. And so this was a much more what's the word cruel system that then I think you put it. I may be wrong, maybe unfair. You may sound like you know capitalist we're doing their business and all that stuff. I don't think there was anything like that. And I don't know if you know who Mobuto Sasi Chico was but he was he's famous for the Muhammad Ali fight, jumble in the jungle but but he was this vicious Belgian leader. And I mean the story is worth keeping in mind is that there was a Patrice Lemumba rebelled against the horrible Leopold II colonizing regime and within months and with the CIA's cooperation he was assassinated and they installed this guy Mobuto Sasi Chico turned the place into a really a living hell until he went away. But so that I think is one thing and So essentially it sounds like Charles the takeaway point is that when we underscore social inequalities that's putting too light of a point on it. Certainly it's inequalities. But it's more than that. It's exploitation, cruel exploitation. Exactly that but violent exploitation. And you might say well that doesn't happen today. Well it did it does. I mean the Russians for one are doing it one way but we still control a great deal you know I mean Nigeria and Kenya are both nations seeking to rise up and Nigeria particularly doing very well but there's still international capitalism you know that what's that crowd that goes that mountain resort? What is that called? Davos. Davos yeah that's crowd of nasty people. They're just you know they go there the size channels. They go there and they talk nice and all that stuff but they're really doing horrible things to the third world or the periphery. We don't use the third war anymore. So there's that. Well I think that's such an interesting point and I think one thing we finished our podcast on was the notion that world systems theory sort of shows us in a way how we're culpable, how we're part of this system to some extent and I think that's such an important point and I think you raise such an important point that what we're part of is very exploitative, very violent and very nasty so I think that's such a really important take away. It's right I mean Wallerstein was a very careful and thoughtful theoretician in historian so you might not always pick that off the page of any particular thing you might read but in fact it was just a horrible system and the semi-periphery is an interesting concept because it's in the case of the America when the United States from about 1946 to 1989 or 1990, '89-91 was the core state. You know we turned Great Britain and France and Japan for a while into our semi-peripheries. You know there's this deal I don't know if you're listener-scarer but I'm mentioning how there's this big deal about America, the charitable with the Marshall plan. We were doing these nice things for Europe. No we were building up economic markets because we had more stuff than we could sell to ourselves and the same with Japan. I mean look at what Japan has become. So Charles that's really interesting I suppose the question I have is about world systems theory itself and it's such a collection of ideas that has stood the test of time it's still highly influential both inside and outside academia and I've got to say as someone who's taught a kind of undergrad globalisation course when you get to the week on world systems theory it seems to be something that students group onto and really engage with more than maybe some of the other subjects that you discuss. Why do you think it still resonates so strongly with people? Well I think one reason is just the fact that I probably shouldn't get into this but world systems theory for manuals first big book on the social 1974 but in a decade and a half before then economic thinking about global matters was WWRSTOW's idea of progress that everybody in the world is either underdeveloped developing and ultimately trying to be Norway or whatever the latest hip nation is and that was it's literally absurd so you had the contribution of taking this linear progressive very liberal notion and essentially taking it apart and say no the world is a series of internal conflicts always has been in the modern era and and probably always will be and in that kind of situation I should say when there's a lot of conflict the bad people the avaricious people I shouldn't say bad but the avaricious people the capitalist and the people who want to steal labor and resources from the periphery they've got an open shot because everybody's preoccupied with other political matters it was the chaos so I didn't I forgot wherever it's going work. Why is it important? I think the important thing is that it gave us the way of thinking about the world it may not be a system in the way he a manual defined it but it is a world with system systemic features and and and I mean look at this deal in Ukraine for example I mean who to thought 40 50 years ago that the United States and the Western world and then NATO would be so preoccupied with this Putin doing these horrible things well they do because it's still a systematic world yeah and then you have bringing in Finland into NATO I mean I've been to Finland and and for long while they wanted nothing to do with all that stuff but now they have an 800 mile border with Russia they want to be part of the game so there's still these systemic features and I think that's why it remains important now. Yeah I mean it makes sense right because if you were going to analyze the Ukraine Russian war just the lens of it being like a bilateral conflict yeah a conflict between two entities alone that would be such a limiting way to understand what's going on yeah and then they're trying to try to get in on that game too we're not sure what they're aiming to do but and serious and serious applying Putin with weapons or was it it's a global conflict really yeah it is no question about it yeah now Charles you've written very eloquently that one should ideally not read Wallerstein's work with a deadline but unfortunately we're working with deadlines on the podcast so we might have to bring things to a close what are you working on tell us about some of the works that are going to be released in the next little while. Well I mentioned in my email to you that there's this big book Americans thinking America a history of Americans social thought from the 1700s Thomas Payne if that names for me your Benjamin Franklin and so on Jonathan Edwards up to the whatever the last book Judas Butler is published she publishes every couple months ago and it's a it's trying to make sense of how Americans by the way it was inspired by Wallerstein we were members of this this quite nice group that met every two weeks and I once presented a paper which I was talking about for a post-World War II American thinkers like David Reesman he and he said what happened to the Europeans and I said Emmanuel Americans do this stuff too and I thought I'd better write a book to do it's not you sure it's it's America and I'm not saying America's special hardly that doing that but I've also you you you mentioned that I did this book with a quite brilliant younger scholar from University of Toronto who used to be a Yale Christian Please on the uncertain future of capitalism we're going to follow that book with the certain future of Marxism and I'm writing a book it's a collection of essays really called Silence in Society which you know that that'll leave the listeners puzzled but it'd be too difficult to go into the data well no maybe not we view everything that goes on society as communication community communication and in fact there's no communication without and sometimes enormous and awkward silences and then there's the other silent silences that affect our lives the death of a love life lost as you may know two of my children in adult life but but deaths are create a silence and communities everywhere there are silent places where it may be a simple people don't know what to say or do when they're there but anyhow Charles you've given us so much food for thought for silent reflection and we wanted to thank you for your time today every all listeners check out Charles's works and thanks for listening this episode thank you okay all right thank you guys nice stop it to you the sociology of everything podcast is created and hosted by Eric sue and Louis Everest it produced and edited by Eric sue to learn more about studying sociology and other exciting programs online or in person at the University of South Australia visit unionsa.edu.au where you can search for more details the sociology of everything podcast is primarily produced on the lands of the garner people the hosts of the podcast would like to pay their respects to elders past present and emerging the opinions expressed in the sociology of everything podcast are that of the hosts and guest speakers they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone at unionsa or the institution at large if you'd like to get in touch or learn more about the podcast then visit our website at sociologypodcast.com thank you for listening