Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Inter-Societal Dynamics

Part of the book series: Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives ((EGCP))

  • 99 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter reviews the most prominent perspective of inter-societal systems in sociological theory—world-systems analysis. This chapter discusses the theoretical origins of the perspective with the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and how this perspective emerged from dependence theory and classical theories of imperialism. The chapter outlines a series of critiques of world-systems analysis which illustrates the need for a general and scientific theory of inter-societal systems. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the earliest geo-economic and geo-political relations among hunter-gathers in the Middle Paleolithic period to further motivate the need for a theory of inter-societal dynamics that accounts for these dynamics in prehistoric, premodern, and modern inter-societal systems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Abrutyn, Seth, and Jonathan H. Turner. 2022. The first institutional spheres in human societies: evolution and adaptations from foraging to the threshold of modernity. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before European hegemony. The world system Ad 1250–1350. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alderson, Arthur S., and Roshan K. Pandian. 2018. What is really happening with global inequality? Sociology of Development 4 (3): 261–281.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amin, Samir. 1991. The ancient world-system versus the modern capitalist world-system. Review 14(3): 349–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The long twentieth century: money, power, and the origins of our times. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arrighi, Giovanni. 2001. Global capitalism and the persistence of the north-south divide. Science & Society 65 (4): 469–476.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arrighi, Giovanni. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: lineages of the twenty-first century. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Babones, Salvatore J. 2015. What is world-systems analysis? Distinguishing theory from perspective. Thesis Eleven 127 (1): 3–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baran, Paul A. 1957. The political economy of growth. New York: Monthly Review.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blau, Peter. 1964. Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boswell, Terry, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2000. The spiral of capitalism and socialism: toward global democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer, Pascal. 2018. Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Yukio Kawano, and Benjamin D. Brewer. “Trade globalization since 1785: Waves of integration in the world-system.” American sociological review (2000): 77–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braudel, Fernand. 1977. Afterthoughts on material civilization and capitalism. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brosnan, Sarah F., and Michael J. Beran. 2009. Trading behavior between conspecifics in chimpanzees, pan troglodytes. Journal of Comparative Psychology 123(2): 181–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carneiro, Robert L. 1970. A theory of the origin of the state: traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis. Science 169 (3947): 733–738.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carneiro, Robert L. 1978. Political expansion as an expression of the principle of competitive exclusion. In Origins of the state, ed. R. Cohen and E.R. Service, 205–223. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issue.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carneiro, Robert L. 1981. The chiefdom: precursor of the state. In The transition to statehood in the new world, ed. G.D. Jones and R.R. Kautz, 37–79. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carson, John. 2017. Archaeology: stone age trade. Nature: Human Behavior 50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1989. Global formation: structures of the world-economy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Hall. 1997. Rise and demise, comparing world-systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Halls. 1993. Comparing world-systems: concepts and working hypotheses. Social Forces 71 (4): 851–886.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Kelly M. Mann. 1998. The wintu and their neighbors: a very small world-system in Northern California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Anthony Roberts. 2012. The structural crisis of global capitalism and the prospects for world revolution in the 21st century. International Review of Modern Sociology 38 (2): 259–286.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Hioko Inoue, Teresa Neal, and Evan Heimlich. 2015. The development of world-systems. Sociology of Development 1 (1): 149–172.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Randall. 1990. Market dynamics as the engine of historical change. Sociological Theory 8 (2): 111–135.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cox, Oliver C. 1959. The foundations of capitalism. New York: Philosophical Library Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Incifer Banu Dogan and Michailidou Anna. 2008. “Trading in prehistory and protohistory: Perspectives from the eastern Aegean and beyond”. In Charikleia Papageorgiadou-Banis and Angeliki Giannikourē (eds.), Sailing in the Aegean, readings on the economy and trade routes, pp. 17–53, Athens: Maethmata.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emerson, Richard M. 1962. Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review 27(1): 31–41.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilpin, Robert. 1987. The political economy of international relations. Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Firebaugh, Glenn. 2003. The new geography of global income inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre. 1966. The development of the underdevelopment. Monthly Review 8 (4): 17–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre. 1967. Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre. 1969. Latin America: underdevelopment or revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre Gunder. 1978. World accumulation, 1492–1789. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979a. Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979b. Mexican agriculture 1521-1630: transformation of the mode of production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979c. Unequal accumulation: intermediate, semi-peripherical, sub-imperialist economies. Review 2(3).

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, Andre Gunder, and Barry K. Gills, Eds. 1994. The world system: five hundred years or five thousand? New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gamble, Lynn H. 2020. The origin and use of shell bead money in California. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 60: 101237.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hobson, John A. 1902. Imperialism: a study. Unwin Hyman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hopkins, Terry, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1996. The age of transition: trajectory of the world-system, 1945–2025. New York: Zed Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inoue, Hiroko, Alexis Álvarez, Kirk Lawrence, Anthony Roberts, Eugene N. Anderson, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2012. Polity scale shifts in world-systems since the bronze age: a comparative inventory of upsweeps and collapses. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 53(3): 210–229.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jevons, William Stanley. 1875. Money and the mechanism of exchange. D. Appleton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Samuel G.B., Jiewen Zhang, and Frank C. Keil. 2021. Win-win denial: the psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Forthcoming).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kentor, Jeffrey. 2000. Capital and coercion: the role of economic and military power in the world-economy 1800–1990. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kentor, Jeffrey. 2008. The divergence of economic and coercive power in the world economy, 1960 to 2000: a measure of nation-state position. Institute for research on world-systems working paper #46. https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows46/irows46.htm.

  • Lenin, Vladimir. 1917. Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. International Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyer, John W. 2000. Globalization: sources and effects on national states and societies. International Sociology 15 (2): 233–248.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Jason W. 2001. Capital, territory, and hegemony over the ‘Longue Duree.’ Science & Society 65 (4): 476–484.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mueller, Jason C., and Steven Schmitt. 2020. Revisiting culture and meaning-making in world- systems analysis: a proposal for engaging with the cultural political economy approach. Critical Sociology 46 (4–5): 711–728.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prebisch, Raul. 1950. The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. New York: United Nations.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prebisch, Raul. 1959. Commercial policy in the underdeveloped countries. American Economic Review 49 (2): 251–273.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, Anthony, and Jason Struna. 2010. The interface of global class formation and core-peripheral relations: toward a synthetic theory and analysis of global inequalities. IROWS Working Paper #61. https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows61/irows61.htm.

  • Robinson, William. 1998. Beyond nation-state paradigms: globalization, sociology, and the challenge of transnational studies. Sociological Forum 13 (4): 561–594.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William. 2001. Social theory and globalization: the rise of a transnational state. Theory and Society 30 (2): 157–200.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William. 2004. A theory of global capitalism: production, class and state in a transnational world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William. 2008. Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Globalization Perspective. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William. 2014. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, William, and Jerry Harris. 2000. Toward a global ruling class?: Globalization and the transnational capitalist class. Science and Society 64 (1): 11–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salomon, Erika, and Andrei Cimpian. 2014. The inherence heuristic as a source of essentialist thought. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40 (10): 1297–1313.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanderson, Stephen K. 2012. Rethinking sociological theory: introduction and explaining a scientific theoretical sociology. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publisher.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singer, Has. 1950. The distribution of gains between investing and borrowing countries. American Economic Review 40: 473–485.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spencer, Herbert. 1874. The study of sociology. New York: D. Appleton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Struna, Jason. 2009. Toward a theory of the global proletarian fractions. Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 8 (2–3): 230–260.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan H. 1972. Patterns of social organization: a survey of social institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan. H. 1998. Some elementary principles of geo-politics and geo-economics. EuraAmerican: Journal of European and American Studies 28: 41–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan. H. 2003. Human institutions: a theory of societal evolution. Boulder CO: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010a. Theoretical principles of sociology, Volume 2 on microdynamics. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010b. Theoretical principles of sociology, Volume 1 on microdynamics. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan H. 2017. Principles of inter-societal dynamics. Journal of World-Systems Research 23 (2): 649–677.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan H. 2021. On human nature: the biology and sociology that made us human. New York and London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Jonathan H., and Richard S. Machalek. 2018. The new evolutionary sociology: recent & revitalized theoretical and methodological approaches. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974a. The modern world-system: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974b. The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16: 387–415.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1980. The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750. New York, NY: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1987. Historical systems as complex systems. European Journal of Operational Research 30 (2): 203–207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1988. The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World Economy, 1730–1840s. New York, NY: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1990. Culture as an ideological battleground of the modern world-system. Theory, Culture, & Society 7 (2–3): 31–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1998. Uncertainty and creativity. American Behavioral Scientist 42 (3): 320–322.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2003. The decline of American power: the U.S. in a chaotic world. New York: The New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woodburn, James. 2016. “Silent trade with outsiders: Hunter-gatherers’ perspectives.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 473–496.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Jonathan H. Turner

  2. Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Anthony J. Roberts

Authors
  1. Jonathan H. Turner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Anthony J. Roberts
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan H. Turner .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Turner, J.H., Roberts, A.J. (2023). Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques. In: Inter-Societal Dynamics. Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-12447-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-12448-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation