/liberty/ - Liberty

>>89596

Well, what research have you done so far? What are you asking about? This is pretty low-effort anon. I'll post stuff but not if you're asking me to do literally all of the work.

>>89619

there was a cycle of lectures organized by my (((university))) that refered to semiperipheriality and i was present at some lectures of this cycle. i think that nowadays in many areas of life we can admit that 1st world is a centrum because it influences to bigger extent than is influenced. but of course i hate their view to international trade

>>89596

so, world-systems theory used to be a big thing. came around just after ww2 or so, kicked off mainly in the US. Two biggest early names are Wallerstein and John Meyer. John Meyer is still alive, he's a goofy old retired stanford professor that still makes his rounds across the lecturing circuit / emailing type things. Read those two first. you are using words like "centrum" which implies to me that you are way off in one of the derivative type areas that got detached from what the original theories were all about. Read early john meyer stuff ,and read later wallerstein stuff.

more conventional language is: core vs. periphery. that got attached to specific geopolitical type overtones over time, and also got attached to weird colonialist type policy-mongering somehow, so now i imagine thats why they now would say some type of crazy thing like centrum instead of core and periphery.

As to the theory itself: yes, networks are WAY better than hierarchies, so world system is infinitely better than marxist-esque interpretations of the economy right of the bat since networks are not hierarchical, do not imply a dominant ruling class cabal with all powerful authority, and imply much more of a networked interchange type thing.

So since that theory kicked off right after world war 2, and since the world got lots more connected and global trade type things started interconnecting policies, a lot of the prior neo-marxist type social thinkers started moving over to the world-systems type point of view.

Side note: those folks never left.

>>89661

That's when "core" started taking on weird notions like it was just another manifestation of class, and that "core" could essentially dominate periphery and dictate it's modes of interaction with the world.

Ultimately this is probably true to an extent, but I thiunk only in the sense that capitalism is in fact somewhat hierarchical, and that there really is some faint idea of class structure or a ruling class type of aristocracy type thing. But, just like marx was wrong and totally mischaracterized and wildly oversimplified the economy , the notion that the power now resides in the "core" is wrong for exactly the same reasons. In reality, there is a tug of war between core and periphery, and the center of gravity is constantly shifting.

This notion is very much present in the early work bfeore it got hijacked and subverted by the neo-marxists. Also, world systems is becoming popular in academia again. guess why? and guess where it's gaining popularity especially rapidly right now? The rapid rise in academia in the last decade or so also paralleled (in location of professors and timing of articles) almost exactly a similar rise in communist type neo-marxist policies on the political spectrum, and started cropping up in scando-europe countries first (still there hugely), and then europe, and then now more so slightly in the US. FYI, 3 years ago or so the ASA (american sociological association) awarded john meyer the fields highest honor at its convention. He deserved it. but the reason he got it was because the marxists were back and had for some reason taken him as one of their intellectual leaders.

Anyway, that was a long rant but I will say that you might want to now get a little more empirical take on that same type of view by reading two dudes from economics. First Mises (you gotta read him because he epitomizes the views these next two dudes try to take on) and then read Minsky - stabilizing and unstable economy. Minsky has kind of a similar type of idea but doesn't use terms like core and periphery. He's kind of like the economists version of trying to deal with the notion that cycles happen. Mises also deals with business cycles. Read them both, and you'll get a way better understanding of why basically all economists can't explain cycles: it's a super hard problem and there isn't an answer out there, it's unsolved.

Why that's relevant is this: cycles are the same dynamic that's missing in the core / periphery argument. Cycles happen, which means the power fluctuates, it's never always and universally controlled by the /same people or countries in the core/ – sometimes the core has to respond and adapt to the periphery, and sometimes the entire power balance can shift to the periphery and away from the core. This can also happen for basically no reason at all – which is what economists kind of get at with things like the herding effect, bandwagon effect, and information cascades.

but I will agree with you though: it is very very convincing on an intellectual level and infinity times better than marxism 1.0. But you have to be careful about how you think about it. I actually do really buy the theory of it a lot, but I absolutely do not buy the way the theory is being presented and characterized right now by contemporary academics / academic publications.

Another major downside of the theory: it's very similar to marx in the sense that it's not falsifiable. It's intellectually appealing and it seems to be intuitively very plausible. But think on this: how might you go about proving it WRONG. imo, that's a trick question: you can't really. And, that's why, in my opinion, for that exact reason, that's why the neo-marxists all piled back in to that area of research and misinterpreted "core" as "power". smh. oh well. out of curiosity, what country was this / what academic field hosted it / what academic fields were the professors from?

>>89662

core/periphery theorists know that it changes which places are core

>>89633

r u ok?