This document provides an overview of world systems theory, which examines how structures shape the flow of people, goods, and ideas globally. It discusses key concepts such as the core, semi-periphery, and periphery of the global economic system. World systems theory views the global economy as a single world-economy larger than any political unit, with economic relations between parts being most important. It also examines resistance to the world system, modernity, global flows of different types, and the central role of media and cultural imagination.

1. What structures the paths along which people, goods
and ideas flow through the world?
Mark Allen Peterson, PhD
Miami University
WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY

2. The Modern World System

3. WORLD SYSTEM
Core
Semiperiphery
Periphery

4. WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY
“The secret of
capitalism was in
the establishment of
the division of labor
within the
framework of a
world-economy that
was not an empire.”Immanuel Wallerstein 1974

5. Large axial division of
labor with multiple
political centers and
multiple cultures
Large bureaucratic
structures with a single
political center and an
axial division of labor, but
multiple cultures
TWO KINDS OF EMPIRES

8. Between 1450 and 1670, something new emerged…

9. Capitalism

10. MODE OF PRODUCTION
1. Exchanges of goods and
services (trade)
2. calculated according to a
universal medium of
exchange/value
(money),
3. and carried out by means
of a “supply + demand =
price” mechanism
(market).
1. Ownership of the means
of production
– Skills and Knowledge
– Tools
– Land
2. Accumulation of wealth
– Reinvestment
– Inheritance
Market Economy Class Relations

11. Capitalism is
only one of many
possible kinds of
economy
CAPITALISM

12. RESISTANCE
European trade with
Japan opened in 1543
Sakoku: Closed door
policy. Implemented in
1635

13. RESISTANCE
1858: US forces Japan to
reopen its ports to
international trade.
• Control over tariffs
• Extraterritoriality

14. MODERNITY
Modernity: A cultural
system marked by belief
in science, secularism,
planning, and progress.
Modernization: Japan
underwent a 77-year
centralized transition to
turn itself into a modern
empire on the European
model.
Japanese Battleship Asahi

15. THE WORLD ECONOMY
A world economy “encompasses within its bounds
empires, city-states, and the emerging nation-states.
It is a world economy not because it encompasses the
whole world but because it is larger than any juridical
defined political unit. It is a world-economy because
the basic linkage between the parts of the system is
economic.”
-- Immanuel Wallerstein

16. What is important is not the parts—states,
empires, transnational corporations, NGOs,
global insitutions—but the relations
between the parts.

17. PROBLEMS
1. Takes nation states for granted
2. Interconnections are between stable elements
3. All movements take place within structural system
(center-semiperiphery-periphery)
4. Doesn’t have a central place for culture

18. GLOBAL FLOWS
Ethnoscapes Transnational flows of people
Mediascapes Transnational flows of information
Technoscapes Transnational flows of technology
Financescapes Transnational flows of capital
Ideoscapes Transnational flows of ideas

19. MULTIPLE CENTERS AND PERIPHERIES
1. Not all “centers” are
central to all kinds of
flows
2. One may be “center” to
certain flows and
“peripheral” or
“semiperipheral” to
others in the global
system.

20. REGIONAL FLOWS
Cairo is on the global film
periphery but is the center of
regional film flows.
Cairo is a center of global
Islamic learning (flows of the
“ideoscape”); US is on the
periphery.

21. CULTURAL IMAGINATION
Imaginary
Fantasy
Escape
Opium of the Masses
Passivity
Imagined
Real
Engagement
Selectivity & Resistance
Action
We collectively imagine the social world into existence

22. CENTRALITY OF THE MEDIA
• Resource for the
cultural imagination
• Media and
audiences in
simultaneous
circulation
• “Improvisation" in
the lives of both
groups and
individuals
• New forms of
sociality