Global formation: Structures of the world-economy

In this volume, complementary to Immanuel Wallerstein's "The Modern World-System",Christopher Chase-Dunn addresses theoretical questions r aised in the analysis of the capitalist world-economy and reviews recent r esearch which bears on these questions. He formulates a structuralist a pproach , reframing Marx's theory of capitalist accumulation to incorporate the processes of class formation and state building. The book compares a model of World-system cycles and trends with the notion of stages of capitalism, discusses the processes behind the rise and fall of hegemonic core states, and the dependent interaction between capitalist accumulation and geopolitics. As well, the book reviews recent literature on the reproduction of the core/periphery hierarchy, trends in the magnitude of international inequalities and cycles which affect the core/periphery relationship. The book also includes a discussion of methodological difficulties encountered in the empirical study of world-system processes. It is an effort to take the world-system perspective beyond historical interpretation to an explicitly structuralist theorization which can be evaluated by comparative research. The volume is aimed at scholars and graduate students in sociology, politics, geography and anthropology.