Frameworks for New Theories: Chaos and World Systems

Abstract

Unlike previous chapters, this one benefits from a preliminary road map; nothing detailed, just a sketch. The following framework draws on Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, especially as he applied it to contemporary conditions in his 2003 The Decline of American Power. Wallerstein has developed world systems theory since the 1970s. Others have also contributed, but he pioneered its modern version for the social sciences. According to world systems theory, one or several political economic systems dominate, or exert hegemony, over regions of the globe during given periods of history. Since about the beginning of the sixteenth century only one system has arisen—the capitalist world system. Other world systems theorists disagree about the beginning point, putting it much further back or seeing a more gradual, multiple-millennial development (Mielants 2007). Nonetheless, Wallerstein’s conception, with its defined historical boundaries, has more utility for present purposes. The five-hundred-year world capitalist system is ending. The present moment, the early twenty-first century, is a time of transition. A new system will emerge, but its nature remains indeterminable (Wallerstein 2003:223). While indeterminable, the successor systems are susceptible to shaping, perhaps more so than during periods ofsystem stability.