Inter-Societal Dynamics: Toward a General Theory 3031124472, 9783031124471

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Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives

Jonathan H. Turner Anthony J. Roberts

Inter-Societal Dynamics Toward a General Theory

Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives Series Editor Ino Rossi, Saint John’s University, Great Neck, NY, USA

This series documents the range of emerging globalities in the 21st century at the national, transnational and trans-civilizational levels of analysis. “Globality” refers to a global condition where people located at any point on Earth are aware of being part of the world as a whole—the world as a single interacting entity. Social interactions occur among actors belonging to different societies, different social strata and different cultural traditions so that the condition of “globality” is experienced in many different ways. Examples of emerging globalities are social movements generated from the unfulfilled promises of neoliberalism and feelings of discrimination and marginalization of lower social strata; cultural otherization or the blaming of economic problems of certain geographical areas on a low level of cultural development; insecurities generated by technological risks, epidemics, and global terrorism; uncertainties generated by processes of transnational governance, outsourcing, unbalanced trade and massive migrations; biology-machine interfaces and impacts of non-human organisms and technologies on human consciousness and action; long-term threats of global warming, climate change and depletion of bio-diversity; increasing exploitation and marginalization of less industrialized regions. We state that globalization entails encounters and often clashes among people and nations of different civilizational traditions. Hence, one of the exploratory questions of these volumes will be the extent to which negative or problematic globalities are reactions to failed promises and unrealized ideals of civilizational and national traditions and/or perhaps attempts to revive those traditions. Our notion of civilizational tradition takes inspiration from the classical works of Spengler and Toynbee, Benjamin Nelson, Vytautas Kavolis, Roland Robertson, Johann P. Arnason, Jeremy Smith, and others; a tradition which is in sharp contrast with the civilizationism recently promoted by authoritarian leaders with hegemonic ambitions. The volumes in this series aim to extend the inter-civilizational focus of classical civilizational thinkers from the analysis of the origins and development of civilizations to the fostering of contemporary inter-civilizational dialogues; the intent is to facilitate an international rapprochement in the contemporary atmosphere of global conflicts. The volumes will reflect the diversity of theoretical perspectives and captures some of the novel thinking in social sciences, economics and humanities on intraand inter-societal processes; the attention to novel thinking will extend to emerging policy formulations in dealing with threats, risks, insecurities and inequities and to strategic thinking for a sustainable global future. The historical perspective will also be an important component of analysis together with the avoidance of West-centric perspectives. The intended readership of this series is not just an academic audience but also policy decision-makers and the public at large; accessibility of language and clarity of discourse will be a key concern in the preparation of these volumes.

Jonathan H. Turner Anthony J. Roberts •

Inter-Societal Dynamics Toward a General Theory

123

Jonathan H. Turner Department of Sociology University of California Riverside, CA, USA

Anthony J. Roberts Department of Sociology Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO, USA

ISSN 2731-0620 ISSN 2731-0639 (electronic) Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives ISBN 978-3-031-12447-1 ISBN 978-3-031-12448-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Randall Collins & Christopher Chase-Dunn In appreciation for their efforts to expand the reach of inter-societal theorizing and to inspire out effort, for better or worse, to make this approach more scientific and theoretical

Preface

Sociology from its beginning addressed inter-societal dynamics, although these early efforts typically emphasized their effects on internal societal development than inter-societal evolution. More generally, historians and social scientists have been engaged in studying the ebb and flow of empires and other forms of inter-societal relations. Still, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that inter-societal formations were taken as distinctive level of social reality that, in essence, determined many of the internal structures and dynamics of human societies and their other institutional domains. However, this shift in theorizing initially emphasized how inter-societal systems were often highly exploitive. Starting with dependency theory, and then world-systems analysis (WSA), these perspectives challenged the dominant “modernization theory” and policies of the 1950s and 1960s by emphasizing how inter-societal relations reproduced conditions of underdevelopment and international stratification among societies. Nonetheless, these perspectives identified inter-societal systems as a macro-unit of social organization that needs more study and theorizing. At the same time, these perspectives gave new life to Marxist arguments about the “contradictions of capitalism” becoming evident as world-level capitalism spread across the globe, leading somehow to the collapse of capitalism and the rise of socialism and a new world order. This always struck us as rather unlikely and, like all “end of history” arguments, has more hope and bluster than predictable outcome derived from a general theory. It was, as has always been the case in sociology, giving unjustified credence to ideologies about what should occur, as opposed to what can and does occur, in human societies, and now inter-societal systems. As authors, we are a couple of sociological generations apart, with J. H. T. receiving his Ph.D. in the 1960s and A. J. R. receiving his in the twenty-first century. Not only age but our respective knowledge bases are somewhat different. J. H. T. is a general theorist, who is not bothered, by the epithet “grand theory” as long it is actual theory rather than grand illusions, as is much of the ideology that penetrates the world-systems tradition today. A. J. R. is trained in world-systems theory and research, as a former student of Christopher Chase-Dunn who has been vii

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one of the most important scholars in this tradition. The book could not have been written without our respective skills, and as will become evident, this book will look very different from other works in the world-systems tradition over the last 50 years. This is a theory book rather than an empirical book—although empirical reality is not ignored since, after all, this is what we are trying to explain. We accept the view that inter-societal systems are an emergent level of social reality that has been universal since the beginning of human societies at least 400,000 years ago. Thus, inter-societal systems and their dynamics are an appropriate and, indeed, a necessary subject for abstract sociological theory. For all the good work in WSA, it has been too narrow in its focus on the last 500 years as capitalism arose. In our view, humans have been creating geo-economic systems for hundreds of thousands of years and, hence, should be a set of data points for the other 399,500 years that humans have organized into societies, granted very small and simple societies, but nonetheless societies that have likely (given the data on pre-literate societies) formed geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal systems. This book is, in part, dedicated to Christopher Chase-Dunn in recognition for his effort to push this simple point, even if he would not necessarily agree to our hard-nosed positivism emphasizing the possibility of generating, as the subtitle for this book proclaims, a more general theory of inter-societal dynamics—a theory that covers from the very beginning of such formations to the present and, perhaps, into the future. This is an effort to move toward a general theory rather than a set of historical descriptions, classification of societies in inter-societal formations, and weak ideological arguments expressing hope for a certain form of inter-societal societal governance—socialism. For J. H. T., writing general theories of all layers and levels of human social organization has basically been a 60-year project dedicated to making sociology a theoretical and explanatory science. Indeed, J. H. T. would prefer that sociology go by its original, but short-lived name, Social Physics—a label that might be available if sociology, and especially American sociology continues its evolution into a cheerleader for social justice—a worthy thing to cheer for but not a very useful way to develop knowledge about the dynamics of human societies and inter-societal systems. Social Physics might be a good name for the refugees of American sociology, seeking a label for what they do: value-free (as much as is possible, given that we are all human) analysis of the socio-cultural universe. The book is also dedicated to Randall Collins who produced a series of articles that inspired J. H. T. to begin studying geo-economic and geo-political formations and their dynamics, and this book is, except for three articles, is the outcome of decades of reading about inter-societal systems. Collins’ articles and what they inspired motivated J. H. T. to push hard for Christopher Chase-Dunn’s appointment at the University of California Riverside to build a strong graduate specialization populated by a constant flow of very good young scholars to their Ph.D.s, such as A. J. R., who would also take J. H. T.’s theory courses. Our zoom dialogues and exchanges of drafts over the last year have allowed us to write this book, drawing upon our respective knowledge bases and analytical skills.

Preface

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What we present is only tentative; it simply is our best effort, at this point in time. Our hope is that other scholars working in the world-systems tradition will join us in trying to make WSA less ideological, less descriptive, and less constrained by the emphasis on the last 500 years of history. Instead, WSA should draw upon, as we do, the very large databases, and analyses of these bases, now accumulated on all types of societies that have existed over the last 400,000 years. These offer the information needed to begin developing more abstract theoretical models and inventories of abstract principles. What we offer is not a complete, and perhaps not even an accurate theory, but we hope to convince at least some that this kind of effort at developing general, and highly abstract, theory is useful. Murrieta and Santa Barbara, CA, USA Fort Collins, CO, USA

Jonathan H. Turner Anthony J. Roberts

Contents

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 The Fundamental Properties of Human Societies . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Social Structures in Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Institutional Domains in Human Societies . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Stratification Systems in Human Societies . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Cultural Structures in Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Infrastructures in Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 A Model of Infrastructural Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Impacts of Infrastructure on Societal and Inter-societal Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Societal and Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Immanuel Wallerstein’s and World-Systems Analysis . . . . . 2.2 The Evolution of the Modern World-System . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Theoretical Roots of World-System Analysis . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Imperialism and Capitalism as a Global System . . . 2.3.2 Dependency Theory and Unequal Exchange . . . . . . 2.3.3 Exchange Theorizing in Sociology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Limitations of World-Systems Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Descriptive Theorizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 The Marxist Ideology of World-Systems Analysis . . 2.4.3 The Return to Marxism: William Robison’s Critique of World-Systems Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.4 The Absence of Geo-Cultural Dynamics . . . . . . . . . 2.4.5 Scope Conditions and Pre-modern Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.6 The Predictive Power of World-Systems Analysis . .

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2.5 From the Beginning: The Pervasiveness of Inter-Societal Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.1 The Beginnings of Geo-Economic Relations . . . . 2.5.2 The Evolution of Markets and Money . . . . . . . . . 2.5.3 The Beginnings of Geo-Political Relations . . . . . 2.5.4 The Basis of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Scientific Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Developing Scientific Explanations of Inter-Societal Systems 4.1.1 Fundamental Properties of Inter-Societal Dynamics . . 4.1.2 A Typology of Inter-Societal Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.3 A Strategy for Developing Scientific Theories . . . . . . 4.2 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Geo-Political Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Evolution of Polity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 Consolidating Bases of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2 Centralizing Bases of Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.3 Bases of Power in Geo-Political Dynamics . . . . . . . 5.1.4 A Model of Power Consolidation and Centralization 5.2 Expansion Through Warfare: The Intersection of Geo-Economic and Geo-Political Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Success and Failure in Geo-Political Actions . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 A Model of Geo-Political Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Strategies of Domination, Point of Over-Extension, and Collapse of Geo-Political Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Key Ideas for Building a Scientific Theory of Inter-Societal Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Two Early Theoretical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Herbert Spencer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Ibin Khaldun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Contemporary Theoretical Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Peter Turchin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Christopher Chase-Dunn and Colleagues . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Randall Collins on the Dynamics of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Fernand Braudel and Randall Collins on Markets . 3.2.5 Jack Goldstone on State Breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.6 Ecological Theories and Inter-Societal Dynamics . . 3.2.7 World Society Theory and Geo-Cultural Dynamics 3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5.4.1 5.4.2 5.4.3 5.4.4

Mutual Defense Pacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kin-Based Geo-Political Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “Plantation” Geo-Economic Systems and Power Use . . . Tributary Patterns of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.5 Colonial Patterns in Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.6 Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems and the Emergence of Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Additional Theoretical Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.1 Success and Size of Geo-Political Expansion . . . . . . . . . 5.5.2 Duration and Stability of Geo-Political Systems . . . . . . 5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 Geo-Economic Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Reconceptualizing the Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Physical Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.3 Human Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.4 Transactional Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.5 Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.6 Structural Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.7 Cultural Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Models and Principles of Geo-Economic Dynamics . . . . . . . . 6.2.1 Basic Economic Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.2 Dependency in Geo-Economic Relations . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.3 Modern Patterns of Geo-Economic Relations . . . . . . . . 6.2.4 Modeling Recent Trends in Geo-Economic Inter-Societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2.5 Additional Theoretical Propositions on Geo-Economic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Geo-Cultural Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Drivers of Geo-Cultural Dynamics . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Proximity and Language . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Diffusion of Geo-Cultural Formations . 7.1.3 Structural and Cultural Equivalences . . 7.1.4 Infrastructural Equivalence . . . . . . . . . 7.1.5 Market Development and Exchange . . 7.1.6 Political Domination and Culture . . . . 7.1.7 Economic Domination and Culture . . .

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7.2 A General Model of Geo-Cultural Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Explanatory Principles on Geo-Cultural Inter-societal Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 The Interplay of Geo-Cultural, Political, and Economic Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.1 Geo-Political Strategies of Domination and Institutional Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.2 Geo-Economic Strategies of Domination and Institutional Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 Structural and Cultural Equivalences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Fig. 3.8 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3

The process of developing generalized symbolic media of discourse and moralization of institutional ideologies . . . . . Fundamental subsystems of human societies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural structures in human societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dynamics generating infrastructure in human societal and inter-societal formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spencer’s implicit model of the dynamics of geo-political formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spencer's conception of cycle phases of political centralization and decentralization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secular cycles of societies and inter-societal systems . . . . . . . . Christopher Chase-Dunn’s iteration model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modeling of Randall Collins’ theory of geo-politics . . . . . . . . . Fernand Braudel’s analysis of the evolution of markets . . . . . . Extensions of Randall Collins’ Conception of Meta-market Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gerhard Lenski’s assessment of global evolution in the global system of societies in the last 10,000 years . . . . . Consolidation and centralization of power and geo-political action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forces operating to form geo-economic and geo-political formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Complex Dynamics of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forces driving societal complexity and types of geo-economic inter-societal formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conditions Increasing Likelihood of a Dependency Geo-economic Inter-societal Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Forces driving more recent patterns of geo-economic inter-societal systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

List of Figures

Conceptualizing culture at a high level of abstraction in geo-cultural inter-societal systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 The dynamics of geo-cultural formations and geo-cultural inter-societal systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 4.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 7.1 Table 7.2

Legend for signs on figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generalized symbolic media of institutional domains . . . . . . . Richard Emerson’s basic theory on power-dependent relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter Blau’s proposition on conflict dynamics in exchange . . Key propositions derived from Randall Collins’ theory of empire building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Extending Jack Goldstone’s theory of state breakdown to inter-state breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Long-Term Patterns of Inter-Societal Relations . . . . . . . . . . . Propositions on geo-political action in inter-societal systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Propositions on the likelihood of geo-political warfare and conquest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Propositions on the size and scope of geo-political expansion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Propositions on geo-political instability and collapse . . . . . . . Modes of organization among corporate unit organization within institutional domains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Propositions on the probability of dependency and degree of stratification in geo-economic systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Additional theoretical propositions on geo-economic systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elements of societal culture and geo-cultural formations in inter-societal systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geo-cultural convergence and inter-societal systems . . . . . . .

.. ..

4 6

.. ..

39 40

..

87

.. 97 . . 112 . . 137 . . 142 . . 158 . . 162 . . 173 . . 184 . . 199 . . 226 . . 231

xvii

Chapter 1

Fundamental Properties of Societies

Over the last half-century, the revival of inter-societal analysis in the form of World-Systems Analysis (hereafter, WSA) has been one of the most important empirical and theoretical developments within sociology. As we will emphasize in this book, human societies have almost always formed inter-societal systems, although most world-systems analysts have emphasized only the last five hundred years as world-level capitalism began to emerge. Still, historians, political scientists, and anthropologists have long studied inter-societal relations among all types of societies—beginning with hunting and gathering and moving through horticulture then agrarianism, industrialism, and post-industrialism. This emphasis has, we feel, led to analysis of the evolution in the present at the expense of analyzing the full range of inter-societal systems. In our view, inter-societal systems have exist since the beginning of human societies and have episodically existed for many thousands of years right up to the present. In contrast, WSA has generally focused on the evolution of capitalism over a very short historical period of human societies. The result is that “theories” are time-bound and often more descriptive of the last 500 years of history rather than the actual theoretical explanation of the fundamental dynamics of all inter-societal systems. We emphasize this point as a mild critique of current WSA because a general theory of such a universal form of human social organization as inter-societal formations should include all types in all times and in all places where inter-societal have emerged and evolved. The emphasis on the rise of capitalism captures only a 500-year slice of a phenomenon that has existed for at least 800 five-hundred-year spans (400,000 years of human societies divided by 500). The result is that this conceptualization of societies and inter-societal systems is often skewed, which is understandable because the recent history of inter-societal systems is of most interest. Yet, the emphasis on the evolution of capitalism is a very limiting case for a phenomenon that has existed for so many hundreds of thousands of years before capitalism. A general theoretical approach should explain all forms of inter-societal organization, from the simplest to the most complex. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_1

1

2

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

This means that the conceptualization of the phenomenon to be explained— inter-societal dynamics—must begin with a conceptualization of the fundamental properties of societies in general and then, the properties and dynamics of inter-relations among all types of societies. As will become evident, our analysis will be more inclusive of the full range of societal and inter-societal formations than most current theories. And, to engage in this kind of analysis, we should begin with a very abstract and general conceptualization of the fundamental properties of all societal systems.

1.1

The Fundamental Properties of Human Societies

All societies are built from three fundamental elements: (1) social structures, (2) cultural structures, and (3) infrastructures. These vary enormously from the very simple structural, cultural, and infrastructural formations organizing hunting and gathering societies of a few dozen to several hundred individuals to the very complex structures organizing societies numbering many millions and even billions of persons. Yet, in imposing a much longer time frame in conceptualizing societal and inter-societal formations, we can gain greater theoretical purchase on their generic dynamics. And so, we begin our theoretical analysis of inter-societal dynamics by outlining, first, the fundamental properties of social structures and then, move on to the analysis of cultural structures, and finally, infrastructures. For in the end, the properties of social structures, cultural structures, and infrastructures together help explain societal and inter-societal formations for all times and places that humans have lived. The result is that theoretical analysis will thus look different than many contemporary WSA analyses, while at the same time explaining the most recent world-system formations. Indeed, a great deal of WSA analysis can be viewed constructing a classification system for analyzing the evolution of the capitalist world-system as much as an explanation of the operative dynamics of inter-societal systems in general. A theory of inter-societal dynamics must explain the processes operating within and between societies. A system for categorizing societies into roles within international division of labor, such as the WSA’s emphasis on core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral societies in the “modern world-system” was a useful beginning point (Wallerstein 1974). However, this created two fundamental problems: First, how are the dynamics of modern world-systems to be explained by a typology of three types when one of these three types, most typically the semi-periphery, is often missing empirically? And second, and perhaps a more fundamental problem, how does a typology that only classifies phenomena explain the dynamic processes driving these phenomena? Many WSA theoretical approaches have been able to create dynamic models, but some of these have suffered from the problem of not having a sufficiently robust conception of the elements of societies that are involved in inter-societal formations. Often, this problem stems from a weak conception of the internal dynamics of the societies forming inter-societal systems. In this chapter,

1.2 Social Structures in Societies

3

we address this underlying problem by outlining, in detail, the full range of social structures, cultural structures, and infrastructures that are involved in creating inter-societal formations. More will be needed, however, because an outline of the properties of social structures, cultural structures, and infrastructures is only a beginning point of theorizing. We will also need to specify the dynamic processes operating within and between these structures in the formation of inter-societal systems. Still, for the moment, let us simply outline the fundamental societal-level structures that drive the formation of societal and inter-societal systems. We will touch on some dynamic processes, but theoretical models and propositions to be presented in later chapters will delineate a more robust picture of the dynamics driving these structures of social life.

1.2

Social Structures in Societies

There are two pillars on which human societies are eventually constructed: (1) institutional systems or domains and (2) stratification systems. Humans survived over the long run of human history by elaborating the number of institutional systems (Abrutyn and Turner 2022). Stratification systems emerged somewhat later and as a consequence of institutional evolution. Still, even among hunter-gatherers with only one differentiated institutional system (kinship), selection pressures on small populations of hunter-gatherers could occasionally push for very rudimentary forms of inequality and stratification.

1.2.1

Institutional Domains in Human Societies

Institutions are constructed from corporate units organizing differentiated status positions, roles, and normative systems creating divisions of labor within a given institutional domain, such as kinship, economy, polity, religion, education, etc. As noted above, institutional systems have evolved as a response to selection pressures on human populations as they attempted over the last 400,000 years to adapt to diverse environments, eventually inhabiting all parts of the globe. There are only three generic types of corporate units: communities (organizing individuals in ecological space), groups (organizing behaviors of people occupying positions and playing roles), and organizations (coordinating groups of individuals in communities). The first human societies were organized only at the group level. Kinship was confined to nuclear family groups as part of nomadic bands. Such was the structure of human societies for hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, the first bands were built, from one institutional domain—kinship—with all other institutional activities embedded within nuclear families and the band organizing these families. Thus,

4

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

economic, religious, educational, political, and legal activities were not yet structured as distinctive institutional systems but, rather, were embedded in the normative systems of kinship and band, with the band constituting a simple organization of nuclear kin units, although if bands settled down, they could and did morph into a second type of corporate unit, community. And, as populations settled down into more permanent communities, they grew larger and increasingly faced selection pressures that, over time, led to the evolution of the diverse institutional domains listed in Table 1.2. And, in turn, as each institutional domain emerged with its own generalized media of exchange as outlined in Fig. 1.1 on page 5, these media and other generalized forms of value (e.g., prestige, honor, positive emotions) were increasingly distributed unequally to members of bands that became communities, thus introducing the first signs of stratification, and hence, the second pillar of to human societies. Figure 1.1 describes the process by which generalized media first emerge within activities that become institutionalized Table 1.2. Generalized symbolic media have some special qualities. They are the media by which discourse and talk of individuals pursuing various types of activities—e.g., family relations, economic actions to secure resources for production and exchange, relations involving power and authority to coordinate and control, spiritual activities revolving around ritual appeal to supernatural forces, and so on for all institutional domains that evolve (see Table 1.2 for more details). As generalized symbolic media are used in discourse among individuals, themes evolve that will eventually become codified in beliefs, norms, and ideologies. As these themes form ideologies, they moralize institutional activities that are codified into ideologies of right, wrong, appropriate, and inappropriate behaviors when operating within an institutional domain. Ideologies reflect normative agreements that emerge among individuals engaged in the institutional activity, while at the same providing moral guidance as to the nature of norms.

Table 1.1 Legend for signs on figures + = positive effect on - = negative effect on +/- = positive curvilinear effect on -/+ = negative curvilinear effect on +/= = positive effect, leveling off ¼/+ = lagged positive effect, turning positive ¼/- = lagged negative effect, turning negative The signs on lines connecting variables in the model in Fig. 1.1 are defined above. These will be used in all figures in this book. Marking for easy reference this page can make referencing the legend easier.

+

Fig. 1.1 The process of developing generalized symbolic media of discourse and moralization of institutional ideologies

Efforts by Moralized individuals institutional + and actors norms become + + + Emergence to build up part of + Formation of + of a corporate-unit corporate + Talk and + + + Moralized + an intraUse of of discourse generalized cultures units in an themes of + institutional + among ideology symbolic domain of discourse Norms of ideology of individuals medium of to moralize activity division of labor what is right, discourse institutional + + + in corporate + wrong, + + norms + units operating appropriate + in an New + Formation + + + institutional adaptive of networks domain Leadership + Central core problems in networks emerges + emerge emerges

+

1.2 Social Structures in Societies 5

6

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

In turn, institutional norms are used to regulate the formation of corporate units, revealing a division of labor regulated by specific norms and roles within different institutional domains. Accordingly, the terms of discourse that rise when engaged in activities—economic, political, religious, family, artistic, educational, etc.—eventually are codified into a generalized medium for engaging in not only discourse but in exchanges among individuals. Moreover, generalized media moralize human action and interaction by generating conceptions of right and proper behavior within the corporate units that make up an institutional domain. Generalized symbolic media not only provide symbolic tools for discourse and moral guidance in the formation of ideologies and normative systems guiding conduct, but they also become valued resources in their own right, as is outlined in Table 1.2. Each generalized medium is valuable to humans and each institutional domain has its own unique generalized symbolic medium for discourse, exchange, moralizing conduct, and developing cultural systems like ideologies and norms organizing conduct in corporate units in institutional domains. Having power, money, love-loyalty, piety, knowledge, or any of the generalized symbolic media listed in Table 1.2 is rewarding, and as societies become stratified, one of the basic resources distributed unequally is the generalized symbolic media of various institutional domains that, in turn, activate other valued states such has positive Table 1.2 Generalized symbolic media of institutional domains Love/loyalty, or the use of intense positive affective states to forge and mark commitments to others and groups of others Economy Money, or the denotation of exchange value for objects, actions, and services by the metrics inhering in money Polity Power, or the capacity to control the actions of other actors Law Imperative coordination/justice, or the capacity to adjudicate social relations and render judgments about justice, fairness, and appropriateness of actions Religion Sacredness/Piety, or the commitment to beliefs about forces and entities inhabiting a non-observable supernatural realm and the propensity to explain events and conditions by references to these sacred forces and beings Education Learning, or the commitment to acquiring and passing on knowledge Science Knowledge, or the invocation of standards for gaining verified knowledge about all dimensions of the social, biotic, and physical–chemical universes Medicine Health, or the concern about and commitment to sustaining the normal functioning of the human body Sport Competitiveness, or the definition of games that produce winners and losers by virtue of the respective efforts of players Arts Aesthetics, or the commitment to make and evaluate objects and performances by standards of beauty and pleasure that they give observers Note These and other generalized symbolic media are employed in discourse among actors, in articulating themes, and in developing ideologies about what should and ought to transpire in an institutional domain. They tend to circulate within a domain, but all of the symbolic media can circulate in other domains, although some media are more likely to do so than others. These media are also valued resources distributed by corporate units within institutional domains and, hence, are among the resources distributed unequally in a society’s system of stratification Kinship

1.2 Social Structures in Societies

7

emotions, prestige, and a sense of well-being in general. As will become evident, the culture of a society and geo-cultural formations across societies are all built from institutional ideologies which emerge from the moralizing effects of generalized symbolic media. Yet, even when periodically settled, early societies of humans were quite simple, revealing only one institutional system or domain (nuclear families as the basis of kinship), one generalized symbolic medium (love-loyalty), and very little, if any, forms of stratification unless a population was under stress. Thus, the nature of inter-societal systems among these early forms of societies was limited by their simplicity of the structure and, as we will see, by the nature of their cultures (with limited generalized symbolic media to develop ideologies and norms) and little technology to build up infrastructures. Still, inter-societal contact among huntergatherers would be a force that could push populations to begin developing other institutional systems, such as religion, economy, and polity which are somewhat differentiated from kinship and, hence, different from the generalized symbolic medium of kinship. And once the number of generalized symbolic media began to increase, so did the number of valued resources that can be distributed unequally, thus marking the beginnings of inequality and stratification among categories of persons. The evolution of human societies from simple to more complex formations revolving around institutional differentiation and increased levels of inequality and stratification were often the result of problematic inter-societal relations. Indeed, early sociologists like Herbert Spencer (1874–96) argued that circumscription of societies in the same territory could lead to competition and warfare that would cause the emergence of polity as an institutional system as well as stratification built around inequalities in the distribution of power and authority to certain social categories (e.g., male adult leaders) marking the beginnings of a stratification system. Spencer argued that warfare between societies had been a powerful force in the evolution of human societies from simple forms to ever-more complex forms. He also recognized, as have many anthropologists, that expanded trade between populations can make economic activity more prominent, thus marking the very beginnings of the economy as a differentiated institutional system as well as the beginnings of stratification around unequal distributions of valued resources from the trade of bulk and prestige goods with other populations, as well as unequal distribution of prestige and authority inhering in the inequality of valued goods acquired in exchanges with other small societies.

1.2.2

Stratification Systems in Human Societies

Stratification systems are constructed from categoric units that place individuals into social categories marking differences (by sex, gender, age, ethnicity, religious affiliation, occupation, etc.) that carry varying evaluations and that become the basis for inequalities in the distribution of valued resources which can, as noted above, be generalized (e.g., prestige, esteem, positive emotions) or more specific to the

8

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

generalized symbolic media distributed within and between institutional domains (e.g., money, power and authority, piety, love-loyalty, knowledge, etc.). As institutional systems evolve and, eventually, differentiate into specific domains, they develop generalized symbolic media as part of the cultural structure of a society (see next section) that are used as resources for building cultural and social structures (and infrastructures). For example, money is a symbol of value and emerged in a primitive form quite early in human societal evolution to operate as a mechanism for conducting exchanges within the economy of a society, as well as a mechanism for intra-societal exchanges between the economy and other institutional domains and, of course, for inter-societal exchanges among societies. At the same time, money as a valued resource is increasingly distributed unequally by the corporate units of the economy, with all other institutions using money in some way, thus initiating stratification or the unequal distribution of valued resources to categories of individuals and subpopulations. The structural formations and, in the case of generalized media, cultural formations that humans use to adapt to environments also generate inequality and stratification that often work against the integration of societies and inter-societal systems. While the most fundamental categoric units—i.e., sex, gender, and age—were not initially used to stratify people by differential evaluations of their worth and by inequalities in the distribution of resource shares, the very beginnings of stratification would sometimes emerge, as noted earlier, when bands settled into communities (even if only temporarily), when engaged in warfare with neighbors, or when bands faced environmental crises requiring leadership, or when some other force generated selection pressures on a simple band of hunter-gatherers. Under these conditions leadership would evolve into authority and power, marking the very beginnings of stratification. Still, societies with distinctive classes and ranked social strata would not emerge for many thousands of years, although precursors to full-blown stratification would periodically emerge when populations were under stress. Indeed, one source of stress was the conflict between populations, which would push even simple hunter-gatherers to organize leadership systems that, in turn, led to differential evaluations of leaders who would be given more prestige and authority—two highly valued resources that are unequally distributed in all developed stratification systems. At other times, religious leaders would emerge (i.e., shaman) and gain prestige, thus again marking early “differences” (in prestige and influence) within bands that otherwise were mostly egalitarian. Thus, human societies were, in their beginnings, not stratified to any great extent, but eventually they would become stratified as they grew, as they came into conflict with other bands of hunter-gatherers, as they were under ecological stress, and any condition putting pressure on bands of kin units. But for most nomadic hunter-gathering populations, there were powerful cultural ideologies (see next section) against differential evaluations of categories of person and inequality in the distribution of resources. As discussed above, we can conceive of societies as composed of three subsystems. The first subsystem is a social structure, with the basic skeleton of a societal social structure modeled in Fig. 1.2. We will turn to culture next, followed

Groups

Organizations

Communities

Corporate Units

Unequal distribution of opportunities for incumbency in:

Unequal distribution of resources to:

Institutional Domains

Other social categories

Ethnicity

Gender/sex/ age

Social Classes

Categoric Units

Social Structures of Human Societal Systems

Fig. 1.2 Fundamental subsystems of human societies

See Figure 1.4 on page 17

Infrastructures of Human Societies

Effects from Inter-Societal Relations

See Figure 1.3 on page 12

Cultural Structures of Human Societies

1.2 Social Structures in Societies 9

10

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

by infrastructure. The purely structural formations of societies are built by successive embedding of corporate units, with organizations built from groups and with communities constructed from organizations and groups. Corporate units at all levels of social organization distribute resources unequally based on the location of individuals in the divisions of labor in groups and organizations, and the location of individuals and their families within the ecology of communities. The unequal distribution of resources, and hence stratification as a basic social structure of society, is determined by the categoric units of individuals and subpopulations of individuals that become marked and differentially evaluated by cultural standards that arise as generalized symbolic media and institutional ideologies. The more categoric-unit memberships—in age, sex, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual preference, or any other designation by cultural labels—are evaluated on a scale of positive to negative, the more likely is this scaling to lead to inequality in the distribution of valued resources. Accordingly, stratification systems are based on two fundamental pillars: (1) generalized resources such as prestige, positive emotions, and definitions of moral worth are distributed unequally as are (2) generalized symbolic media of institutional domains (e.g., money from the economy, authority and power from all polity, love-loyalty from kinship, knowledge from education, health from medicine, piety and sacredness from religion, aesthetics from art, and competition from sport, justice from law, etc.). Once these two pillars of societies are fully in place, so are symbolic systems allowing for the formation of a culture of a society or cultural models in inter-societal systems. Moreover, generalized media circulate across institutional domains, as is the case when (a) money is used to pay incumbents in corporate units of diverse institutional domains or to purchase in markets the output of different domains and when (b) power and authority “franchised” by polity1 and law to corporate units as a whole and incumbents in corporate units within diverse institutional domains (e.g., to parents in families, educators in schools, doctors in medicine, and so on for all corporate units organized by authority). Inequality also increases when valued and devaluated categoric units are often consolidated. For example, it is often the case for devalued ethnics (by prejudicial beliefs and widespread discrimination by a majority of a population) to be denied full access to corporate units bestowing generalized resources (prestige, honor) as well as highly valued generalized symbolic media as resources, such as knowledge from education, money from the economy, justice from law, health from medicine, and authority from a polity or corporate units in diverse institutional domains. The converse is true for those who are members of categoric units that are evaluated positively. This consolidation

1

Power is, from an institutional perspective, given by polity as conditional authority to corporate units in institutional domains. It can almost always be taken back, but this franchising of authority reduces the monitoring and administrative costs to the polity of micro-managing organizations. Yet, in highly authoritarian societies, one can see that authority in corporate units has a very visible fist of political control. Such is the case in all societies; and in so distributing authority, polity also distributions the generalized symbolic medium of power to some and not others in corporate units.

1.3 Cultural Structures in Societies

11

ramps up the degree of inequality between members of valued and devalued categoric units. It is clear, then, that structural position in corporate and categoric units are dramatically affected by cultural beliefs, ideologies, traditions, and normative systems. Indeed, culture provides the “instructions” for how individuals and groups in organizations and communities are to act as well as the worth and value of individuals, families, and subpopulations revealing distinctive characteristics. Every type of social structure—i.e., groups, organizations, communities, and institutional domains as well as for categoric units such as classes, ethnics, gender, religion, and other designations of a categoric-unit membership—are ultimately the building blocks of stratification systems. And for each element in the structure of institutional domains and stratification systems, there are corresponding symbol systems or cultures. And while these systems of culture are embedded in these structural formations, they reveal unique dynamics that can and should be analyzed as a distinct property of societies. Figure 1.2 on page 9 outlines the key dimensions of societal structures that are affected by cultural structures, as well as infrastructures, but the boxes representing these two additional subsystems—that is, culture and infrastructures—of the human societal organization are empty, thus necessitating that they are filled in. Without culture and the infrastructures in which social structures are grounded, and by which they operate, the properties and dynamics of societies and, potentially, of inter-societal systems cannot be known. And, to some extent, WSA has not fully integrated them in their conceptualizations of inter-societal systems, with the result that theorizing on inter-societal systems has not realized its full potential.

1.3

Cultural Structures in Societies

The term, “culture,” has many connotations in general discourse and the social sciences. For our purposes, the term culture denotes systems of symbols generating common meanings that humans share and use to regulate and organize behaviors of individuals and subpopulations in societal and, at times, inter-societal formations. Social structures are the skeletal system of human societies, but it is the culture that gives these structures meaning and that directs individual and collective behaviors that occur within and between social structures. From our perspective, there are relatively few forms and dimensions of culture that bring life to behaviors and interactions in social structures from which societies, and to an extent, inter-societal structures are created and sustained. Figure 1.3 outlines the key dimensions of culture at the societal and, at times, inter-societal levels of social organization. Specifically, Fig. 1.3 lists the cultural systems attached to the social structures of all societies. There are cultural elements of the whole society, which are then adapted to the two fundamental pillars of societies: institutional domains and stratification systems. The cultures of institutional domains and their respective corporate-unit flow down the left side of

12

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies Macro-level of Societal Organization and Culture Basic Elements of Societal-level Culture

Technologies

Traditions

Texts

Values

Generalized ideologies

Culture of institutional domains

Culture of Stratification System

Use of generalized Symbolic media in talk and theme building

Moral evaluations of members of categoric units

Formation of meta-ideologies

Formation of ideologies within differentiated institutional domains

Formation of status beliefs about members of categoric units

Formation of institutional norms in differentiated domains

Formation of expectation states for members of categoric units

Meso-level of Societal Organization and Culture Application of institutional ideologies to corporate units within institutional domains

Application of status beliefs to members of differentiated categoric units

Creation of moralized normative structure of corporatie units within institutional domains

Expectations states for members of categoric units within divisions of labor of corporate units

Micro-level Interactions in Encounters Focused encounters within corporate units

Focused encounters in public spaces

Fig. 1.3 Cultural structures in human societies

Unfocused encounters in public spaces

Unfocused encounters within corporate units

1.3 Cultural Structures in Societies

13

Fig. 1.3, while the right side of the figure denotes the culture attached to the categoric units from which stratification systems and their cultures are built. As is evident, there is a constant exchange of cultural elements back and forth between the cultures driving institutional domains and stratification systems. Figure 1.3 emphasizes the cultural elements operating at the macro level of social organization —that is, societies and their institutional and stratification systems—which are built, respectively, from corporate and categoric units. The figure also emphasizes that these elements are drawn from systems of symbols that embrace the entire society, while at the same time, often providing new cultural elements for the societal culture. Thus, as designated by the arrows in Fig. 1.3, there is a constant flow of culture from the micro to macro, and vice versa, as well across any given level of social structure. From our perspective, culture works at all levels of social organization—macro, meso, and micro—flowing down and then back up these levels of structural and cultural organization. Probably the most controversial part of Fig. 1.3 is the seemingly limited list of elements of society-wide culture as (a) technologies (knowledge of how to manipulate the environment), (b) traditions (conceptions, beliefs, narratives, etc.) on the past and how this past is relevant in the present and future), (c) texts (any and all symbolic systems codified in as collective memories or as information coded a formal “language” including speech, written language, and many other forms of symbolic communication spoken or written down), (d) value premises (or abstract standards of what is correct and morally right and what is morally wrong and incorrect), and (e) generalized ideologies (or moral codes drawn from values applied to macro social structures and large segments of the population in a society and from the ideologies of dominant institutional domains). Obviously, culture is more complex than implied by these simple labels, but we contend that most symbol systems in the simplest and most complex societies can be described by this basic scheme. We are not interested in the details, per se, of a culture; but, rather, our concern is with how generic forms of culture are critical to the organization of societies, and at times, the operation of inter-societal systems at different structural levels and across different levels of human social organization. At the macro level, the respective cultures of diverse institutional domains are generated by existing technologies (or knowledge about how to manipulate the environment), applications of value premises arising from the other societal-level elements of cultures, and generalized ideologies that, in the past, have been codified by existing institutional domains (e.g., economy, polity, kinship, religion, law, etc.) in a society and the emergence of generalized symbolic media of exchange, as outlined in Table 1.2. The respective cultures of institutional domains and stratification systems, as well as the cultures of each of these two pillars of societies and their constituent corporate and categoric units, all flow from these often-moralized elements of a society’s general culture. The moral systems of culture are used to classify individuals and subpopulations in a society in terms of their worth, value, and other evaluative criteria. Each of the generalized symbolic media evolves moral evaluations, as do institutional ideologies, which are combined (typically with the ideologies emerging in dominant

14

1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

domain institutions) into a meta-ideology that dominates other evaluative symbol systems operating on corporate and categoric units forming institutional domains and stratification systems. Such meta-ideologies, when they arise, feedback and shape the content of the generalized ideologies that affect all structures within a society. The moralized symbol systems become the basis for creating what many social psychologists label as status beliefs (Berger and Zelditch 1985; Ridgeway 2001), which are evaluative beliefs about the character and nature of individuals in diverse categoric units and in diverse locations in the divisions of labor in corporate units. This moral coding, in turn, also drives the formation of normative systems operating on individuals in status locations in the division of labor in corporate units and for the behaviors of individuals who are members of variously evaluated categoric units. Social structures are almost always “moralized” from the macro-level, but as changes occur in macro-, meso- and micro-level cultures, feedbacks from microand meso-levels of social structure can alter macro-level elements of cultures—i.e., technology, texts, traditions, value premises, generalized ideologies operating at the societal-level of organization, and ideologies and normative systems operating within and between institutional domains and stratification system. Change in cultures at any level can come from many sources: other societies, environmental pressures on a population, evolution of new institutional systems, changing beliefs about the nature of incumbents in categoric and/or corporate units, creation of new kinds of corporate units, and interpersonal experiences with incumbents in corporate and categoric units. And, as feedback from micro- and meso-levels of socio-cultural organizations gain traction, they can begin to alter general macro-level cultural formations. Culture exerts its power by virtue of being vertically integrated across structures operating at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of social structural organization, moving up, down, and across types of corporate and categoric units making up, respectively, institutional domains and stratification systems. Such vertical moralization across levels of socio-cultural reality work, on the one side, to constrain and control individuals at all levels of social organization: face-to-face interpersonal behavior, incumbency in groups, organizations, communities that are located within differentiated institutional domains whose culture creates meta ideologies and status beliefs regulating individuals in diverse categoric units within a system of stratification. On the other side, this layering of socio-cultural reality allows for changes at lower levels of organization, from interpersonal experience through various types of corporate and categoric units to filter up to the macro level culture of a society. It is in this context that the structure and culture (and infrastructure as well) can be forces in the creation or, alternatively, collapse of inter-societal systems. Depending on the strategies of dominating dependent societies inter-societal formations, varying elements of social structure, cultural structures, and infrastructures can become the basis of whatever form of inter-societal relations evolves. This reality should alert us to the fact that inter-societal dynamics are very complex depending upon which institutional domains and their ideologies (e.g., economy,

1.4 Infrastructures in Societies

15

religion, polity) and which generalized symbolic media of these domains are the conduits of relations with other societies. The same is true of the respective stratification systems and the status beliefs about categories of persons that make up this system. Over time the nature of institutional and stratification systems can change, thereby forcing, the evolution of new types of inter-societal formations. Moreover, cultural structures and even social structures can circulate among societies, especially when developed infrastructures are in place so that organizing elements of one society can diffuse to other societies. Such is particularly evident in the contemporary world where highly developed infrastructures facilitate the movement of information, people, culture, and resources about the globe, even at the speed of sound and light or at the comparatively more “leisurely movement” pace of air, ground, and ocean travel. And the evolution of world markets and attendant infrastructure has made such diffusion of elements of societies across geo-economic inter-societal systems even more likely. It is also the case that geo-political activities can also carry many elements of social structures, cultural structures, and infrastructures rapidly around the globe—a fact that contemporary world-systems theorizing clearly recognizes but often underemphasizes. But, as we will emphasize, these dynamics have also been operating even in lower technology eras of human organization.

1.4 1.4.1

Infrastructures in Societies A Model of Infrastructural Dynamics

The scale of social and cultural structures has large effects on the capacity of a population to develop infrastructures for generating and distributing energy and material resources to members of a population and the corporate units organizing their activities. For most of human history, the capacity to gain access energy and to distribute this energy was very limited. Indeed, the basic source of energy driving human patterns of societal and inter-societal organization was the consumption of calories to drive the human body for hunting, gathering, exchanging, and other activities. The reasons for this limited access to energy were a very minimal social structure built from two groups—nuclear family and band—and very low levels of technology. The energy needed to sustain these structures and minimal culture was not great, consisting of perhaps 15–20 h of work to gather food by women (often assisted by children) and to hunt-down animal protein by men. This original “Garden of Eden,” portrayed by Marshall Shalins (1968), was highly gratifying and, thus, probably did not provide much motivational push for seeking more sources of energy that would eventually change the nature of societies and human culture. Yet, it is inter-societal relations that may have been the first force driving modest increases in infrastructure, such as the wearing down pathways connecting populations with resources to exchange. A pathway is probably infrastructure in its

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

simplest form, creating a means for humans to expend less energy walking to secure resources in exchanges that are not otherwise available in a population’s particular ecology. As populations settled near water, sometimes episodically and eventually permanently, new infrastructures appeared, such as the addition of more pathways and trails between populations. Fishing, for example, requires “tools” to catch fish, and while the energy driving fishing was human calories, additional tools often began to look like an infrastructure increasing access to fish at less energy costs in human power. For example, rafts and maybe even canoes, or any structure increasing access to protein and calorie-laden fish, can be seen as a proto infrastructure. Yet, even as horticultural populations began to settle down and engage in gardening, it was still human power that drove the economy, as women gardened and as men often helped in heavy tasks such as using digging sticks (a tool) to loosen the soil for plantings. Again, it may have been inter-societal processes that worked to expand infrastructure among early horticulturalists as well, because of the development of pathways across larger territories in highly diverse habitats—from jungles to more open country lands—or the invention of watercraft for movement along rivers and streams extended relations among members of a given population as well as exchange relations with more distant populations. Moreover, as warfare between horticultural societies increasingly became typical, and indeed, as men’s energy was often spent in warfare as much as economic production, observation towers were constructed from the ground or in trees became a form of infrastructure for warfare. Thus, early hunting and gathering societies may also have participated in geo-economics (exchange) and even geo-political activities (warfare), but once populations began to settle down in semi-permanent locations, these became increasingly typical of human societies and, simple horticulture in communities began to spread across the globe. Still, it was probably hundreds of thousands of years before such settlements were prevalent among human populations. Simple tools for economic activities (e.g., spears, crude axes, bow-and-arrows, and boomerangs), were supplemented by (or converted into) weapons for geo-political activities revolving around warfare. Both would begin to increase selection pressures for not only tools and weapons but also for expanded infrastructures that would increase the movements at less calorie cost as more goods were exchanged and as more warriors moved into a neighboring society’s territory. We can conceptualize these processes with a parsimonious model that can describe both the infrastructural dynamics of the simplest to most complex societies. We can do so because the dynamics of infrastructure in small and large societies are essentially the same and, thus, can be theorized. Indeed, the only difference between the two is the scale of the values of the variables interacting in the pattern outlined in Fig. 1.4. The fundamental force behind infrastructural dynamics and the increasing level of organization and culture in a society is population growth. Related to population growth is immigration from other societies that not only increases the size of population, as is emphasized in the directional arrows indicated, it also will bring culture from other populations, or perhaps even new schemes for organizing a

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1.4 Infrastructures in Societies 17

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

growing population. And, as we will see, it marks a form of geo-demography that often becomes part of geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural dynamics, as we see in later chapters. The positive signs of arrows in Fig. 1.4 suggest that once the process of population growth begins, it increases all the other forces moving from left to right in the model. Some of the causal arrows on signed with a “=/+” which, as noted in Fig. 1.4, denotes a lagged positive effect. Since the model is intended to explain infrastructural dynamics in all types of human societies, this lagged effect surely operated because it took many thousands of years for human populations to grow to the where the rest of the forces in the figure had high values. Indeed, there were regimes and then sudden take-offs with population growth, enhanced culture, and more complex structures evolved with settled hunter-gatherers, simple horticulturalists (without the use of animal power), advanced horticulturalists (often using animal and even wind or water power) to simple and then advanced agrarian societies that were larger and more complex in culture, social structures, and infrastructure, and then to industrial and post-industrial societies where many new forms of power and energy evolved in now large, complex, and culturally advanced societies. As the differentiation of social structures and the accumulation of more knowledge in general increased with human societal evolution, the level of technology also increased, which in turn, increased access to new sources of energy, and dramatically accelerated societal evolution, especially over the last 500 years. This knowledge allowed for the use of ever-more efficient tools, eventually powered by new sources of energy—initially animals, wind, and water, and then eventually petroleum, gas, nuclear, solar, and now new forms of wind power from the blades of ocean windmills with blades the length of football fields and even parachute-like sails that are beginning to supplement the petroleum power of container ships circling the globe. And, with new sources of energy, tools could be huge and powerful, whether boring tunnels through the earth to moving massive amounts of materials the buckets of huge bulldozers, trucks, and tankers. And as tools are used in this way, they can also be used to build infrastructures from highways to ports for airplanes or ships. And, as the positive arrows connecting the forces in the middle of Fig. 1.4 emphasize, these dynamics begin to rapidly escalate. Energy, tools, and infrastructures have large effects on the structure and culture of a society; and as they build out, this impact on the scale of physical structures used to house and organize larger, more differentiated populations in all their institutional activities increases dramatically. In so doing, infrastructures directly or indirectly change the culture of a society. Indeed, institutional evolution in human societies was very much related to not only technologies but to their application in building up infrastructures (Turner 1972, 1998, 2002; Abrutyn and Turner 2022; Lenski 1964, 2005; Nolan and Lenski 2021; Turner and Maryanski 2008). And these same processes would inevitably build up inter-societal systems. New sources of energy, more powerful tools, and the building of physical structures created demands for more infrastructures and vice versa. Thus, once this set of variables feeds off each other, infrastructures develop rapidly, and then feedbacks to accelerate the development of tools and new forms of efficient energy.

1.4 Infrastructures in Societies

19

In so doing, these forces leading to development of physical structures to enclose all institutional activity that, in turn, leads to further development of infrastructures between communities of a society and, eventually, between societies. The mutually escalating effects that the forces in the middle of Fig. 1.4 emphasize also feedback and escalate population growth, human migration, cultural and social structural development, and even more dramatic technological development that then feed forward to escalate the search for new sources of energy, new more efficient and powerful tools driven by this energy, new physical structures, and then new infrastructures that allow inter-society relations to operate on a truly global scale. Rapid alteration of physical structures that house, organize, and connect human activities inevitably increases the level of technology that alters key cultural elements, such as values, beliefs, and ideologies that, in turn, eventually pushed humans and their corporate units to “modernity.” And even counter movements to this incessant growth (e.g., environmentalism in all its manifestations) will, themselves, be housed in a physical structures utilizing the infrastructure—roads, airports, ports, airwaves and satellites, roads, trains, cars, etc. of the modern world—to connect ever more of the world’s population. Moreover, as we will see in later chapters, infrastructural development is not only what connects societies in inter-societal systems, it has often been a point of contention among societies, especially when more developed societies seek resources of less developed societies while failing to help develop the infrastructures of these dependent societies, thus trapping them into giving up their highly valued basic resources or narrow range of products for low prices and little technological and engineering assistance in building up their physical structures and, more critically, their infrastructures. It is important to remember that these escalating dynamics started very modestly in the evolution of human societies, but they are fundamentally the same processes, just on a dramatically smaller scale and a slower rate of movement. Thus, the number and scale of physical structures housing and organizing small numbers of nomadic hunter-gatherers into two types of groups (e.g., nuclear family and band among nomadic hunter-gatherers) is on a very modest scale, at best pathways through a territory and the construction of huts. Later, among simple horticulturalists, physical structures such as huts housing families could become more permanent, as could paths to the water, neighboring communities, and even other populations. If the conflict was common, then weapons would become more diverse and deadly, and infrastructural structures like observation towers or platforms in trees could be built to serve as monitoring movements of potential adversaries and as warning signals to the general population. But, even in pre-literate societies, the increasing tool (and weapon) use, the scale of the physical structures built to house and organize groups would increase the scale of infrastructural development, and vice versa. Increases in the scale of physical structure and infrastructure will feed off each other, escalating the scale of both. And as these increase, they will feedback and heighten the valences for all of the other variables in the model. As a result, these forces will feedforward and generate selection pressures for higher levels of technology that increases energy use, tool (and weapon) development, building of

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

physical structures, and expansion of infrastructures for distributing energy across a larger number of individuals organized into new types of corporate units. As we have emphasized, every variable in the model outlined in Fig. 1.4 is positively signed, and so it can be asked: why did it take so long—hundreds of thousands of years, in fact—for the potential dynamism of these forces to take off? The answer resides in the variables on the left side of the model—the beginning points of the chain reaction that would accelerate development. As long as populations remain small, there were no intense selection pressures to expand culture, particularly technologies, nor was there a powerful need to expand the knowledge or the number and scale of corporate units organizing the activities of small populations engaged in hunting and gathering or simple horticulture. Moreover, to increase the amount of energy to build up a society was limited by the lack of technologies for harnessing energy and by knowledge of materials to build physical structures, much less infrastructures. Indeed, through most of the agrarian era, human power was only supplemented by animal, wind, and waterpower. Furthermore, the materials available for building physical structures were for most of the human history sticks of wood and piles of rocks, which still could create spectacular edifices like pyramids, castles, roads, canals, aqueducts, etc. And these only came rather late in human societal evolution —at best the last 8000 years of the 400,000 years of human societal and inter-societal organization. Thus, a knowledge barrier existed with respect to technologies and access to not only materials for building physical structures but also infrastructures. Only under increasing population growth, exchanges of resources, and warfare were their sufficient selection pressures to increase access to sources of energy and materials for building up physical structures for organizing increasing numbers of different types of corporate units and for building infrastructures for gathering and distributing energy that could be used to connect this more complex systems of corporate units. And the knowledge necessary for this development required the evolution of new institutional domains, such as science and education. Religion and polity, under growing populations and/or warfare between societies, were perhaps the prime forces driving the creation of new technologies for building up the social and physical structures of societies. However, these forces tend to generate ideologies, values, beliefs, and knowledge that is limited to regulating access to the supernatural and/or controlling of actions of members of larger populations. They are inherently conservative and generally do not drive the expansion of technology and infrastructures, except those related to worshiping the supernatural and political leaders who are often seen as demi-gods, or the military geared to warfare with other societies and/or suppression of dissent of members of a population, or members of an inter-societal system. Still, once these institutional systems begin to increase the scale of societies, expand their cultures, and generate new physical means for organizing corporate units, they begin the process of expanding infrastructures. Much of social development during the agrarian era was driven by these forces, by episodic expansions and contractions, but alongside these forces driving

1.4 Infrastructures in Societies

21

infrastructural development were economic forces. A productive economy and system of market distribution generate wealth that can be taxed by church and state, and moreover, used to expand human inquiry, thereby allowing science and education to begin to evolve and expand the storehouse of cultural knowledge. And as ever-more diverse sources of energy were discovered beyond animal, wind, and waterpower, infrastructural development was more than a response to geo-economic and geo-political activities; infrastructural development became a driving force, per se, accelerating all the dynamics outlined in Fig. 1.4. And as noted above, the development of new technologies also began to alter value premises, institutional ideologies, meta-ideologies, and normative systems to be compatible with institutional growth and differentiation within and between societies that was made possible by new technologies. And, as the ideologies of emerging institutional domains beyond kinship, religion, polity, and economy were codified, they too would support the expansion of physical structures and related infrastructures for linkages among corporate units within and between institutions within, and moreover, between societies. And later, as dramatically increased capacities to capture and distribute many forms of energy, infrastructure development could be developed to expand the reach of inter-societal systems. The result has been world-level markets, complex systems of inter-societal trading and investment, and as noted earlier in the chapter, potentially new patterns of geo-political conflict and organization. Thus, what is often considered to be an entirely new world-system is, in fact, just a world-system operating on a larger scale, but the underlying dynamics outlined in Fig. 1.4 which have always existed on a dramatically smaller scale, of course, but even so, these dynamics involve the same fundamentals across all forms of human society. Scale makes a difference, but this difference is not as fundamental as is often claimed by world-systems theorists. And the presumption that the societies on earth are moving toward some form of world-level governance is, we feel, rather exaggerated. Markets can still collapse, resources can become scarce, technologically systems can be sabotaged, and geo-political warfare that destroys infrastructures can raise its ugly head and destroy societies and inter-societal systems. Indeed, we could posit with some justification that the current world-system may be moving toward a new era of geo-political conflict. And, the notion of a coming world-level socialism is inevitable as the contradictions of capitalism are finally understood, as many in world-systems theory hope or even predict, is far from inevitable. The vulnerability of modern infrastructures, especially the electronic infrastructures that run just about everything in post-industrial societies, make societies highly vulnerable to geo-political intrusion without firing a shot or dropping a bomb (see Collins 2022). In fact, the dynamics in Fig. 1.4 can work against a world-system because if, for example, markets collapse, warfare breaks out, access to energy decreases, production decreases, and the world economy collapses. This kind of scenario shows that any events decreasing the forces driving infrastructural development carries forward in the model because of the positively signed linkages between the variables in the model. As a result, these forces would reduce the values of any of the

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

variables; and once this process is initiated, it can work to reduce all other variables in the model. Thus, what has been built up can rapidly decline, even though infrastructures have a certain level of longevity, but as the remains of past “civilizations” dug up by archeologists suggest, infrastructures and what they integrate —societies and systems of societies—depend upon the arrows in Fig. 1.4 consistently carrying positive valences. Overall, the positive signs in the model suggest that growth in one variable affects growth or higher values in the other variables, but these same signs also carry reductions in the values of forces across the model. Accordingly, in assessing inter-societal dynamics, we need to know the valence of any of the variables in the model. Those that might turn negative or even stall and flatten out can cascade across the model, decreasing, or dramatically changing, the scale and profile of the world-system in a way not easily predicted.

1.4.2

Impacts of Infrastructure on Societal and Inter-societal Dynamics

Earlier infrastructural systems provide the base for later development of not only infrastructural systems, but also the physical base for the organization of corporate-unit structures. For example, basic infrastructural systems such as irrigation, waste management, and electrical systems create the basis for secondary forms of infrastructure, such as grain storehouses, stable business storefronts, schools, parks, public services (police, fire) hospitals, subways, and other forms of corporate-unit organization requiring physical structures to operate effectively. Indeed, infrastructure allows for higher levels of cooperation among larger numbers of individuals in diverse corporate units that ultimately are the building blocks of institutional systems (McCaffree 2022). Institutional differentiation during human evolution requires ever-more sophisticated tools to build both the infrastructure and physical structures and the paths connecting these physical structures. Thus, infrastructures encourage increased cooperative behavior in more diverse and differentiated corporate units in an increased number of relatively autonomous institutional domains. Moreover, infrastructures reduce incentives for mutual destruction of two or more societies’ infrastructures, even as they are more vulnerable. And so, it is not out of the question that the destruction of a society’s infrastructure can become a goal in all-out wars of attrition. Missiles and bombs often target the infrastructures of enemies for the simple reason that damage to infrastructures makes it difficult producing the instruments of war, while demoralizing populations under siege. As noted above, much of the post-industrial infrastructure within and between societies is electronic, composed of networks of computers and their vulnerable programs, all of which can eventually be “hacked” by other polities, or even non-political mercenaries in other societies. As we will come to see, infrastructure is often the basis for inter-societal relations. Such was the case when the first pathway to another population was cut, but

1.5 Societal and Inter-Societal Systems

23

in societies where there are high levels of inequality in terms of their resources, political power, economic development, institutional bases, physical structures, and infrastructures, the effects of the dominant society on the subordinate can vary. If, as noted above, a dominant society seeks to extract resources from a dependent society, it may do so with selective infrastructural investments, perhaps just enough to secure large quantities of resources and move them to the dominant society. Indeed, maintaining dependence on the dominant society can be a secondary goal of a hegemonic society, which may resist broader infrastructural development in order to sustain the dependence of the poorer society. Yet, there are always pressures from dependent societies for technology, tools, and engineering expertise to develop infrastructure as a means for the polity in a dependent society to sustain its legitimacy. The general population can usually recognize that primary infrastructures will generate secondary infrastructures which, in turn, will allow for the building up of the physical structures of a society and, hence, its social structures and cultures in an increasing number of autonomous institutional domains. Thus, many of the dynamics between societies revolve around exchanges of resources for technologies and resources to build up less developed societies. And if this becomes possible, dependence will in the long run be reduced, and a society can establish less exploitive relationships with dominant societies. For example, the British Empire in its relatively short existence extracted resources from colonies across the globe—India, Middle East, Africa (Kenya), and South Africa. In so doing, it often built-up infrastructure—e.g., roads, oil wells, pipelines, ports for export of resources—and secondary infrastructures that led to the expansion corporate units within economy, polity, and education that, in turn, would allow its “colonies” to develop and, eventually, throw the British out of the society. Indeed, a century earlier when infrastructures were less developed and indeed rather minimal (networks of roads, ports, schools, local governments, etc.), the British did the same in the Americas, thus inviting the Americans to successfully revolt. Hence, everything about a society is related to its infrastructures (and the underlining technologies used in the design and build them). And, as we will outline, they have been a very important part of inter-societal systems, from the very beginnings of human societies.

1.5

Societal and Inter-Societal Systems

The goal of this chapter has been to lay out in the most parsimonious perspective of the three structures—social, cultural, and infra—of human societies that are central in theorizing inter-societal dynamics. We have stayed away from the label “world-system” because it assumes that the world is now, or at least will soon be, one system. And for many, the goal is a world-system that has rediscovered socialism as the most viable form of organization. In reality, we think that the globe is filled with what will nine billion inhabitants distributed across over 100 societies,

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1 Fundamental Properties of Societies

some of them small and undeveloped, others still small but developed, and two that have over a billion inhabitants and others in-between small and large, developed and less developed. While capitalist markets have certainly connected more of the globe than any other mechanisms, there is still the enormous number of people to coordinate across very long distances, with varying cultures and levels of development in their social structures and infrastructures. A one-world polity is not likely. More likely, because it almost exists today, is a world-system that evidences global trade, to be sure, but this trade is not likely to integrate the globe, nor is it likely to slay the dragon that warring and competing polities can become. But our goal in this book is not to make confident predictions. Rather we aim to lay out abstract models and propositions that can be used to account for the various patterns of inter-societal systems and, if possible, to make calculated predictions based on the theory rather than ideology and hopes for the future. For us, inter-societal systems are one of the fundamental and generic forms of social organization, evident from the very beginnings of human society. Therefore, if there is to be a science of human patterns of social organization, there must be a set of models and principles that explain the operative dynamics of inter-societal systems. There can be many directions that inter-societal systems have taken. The most visible and most studied directions are geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal systems. These are not wholly discrete because inter-societal systems generally involve both economies and polities in asymmetrical relations in terms of relative power or economic production and distribution. We will emphasize these two forms of inter-societal systems, developing models and propositions to explain the dynamics of both. We will also address the notion of geo-cultural inter-societal systems. This form of inter-societal system can be layered over geo-political or geo-economic systems, or it can evolve by other means, such as heavy migrations of persons and families from one culture into another, the diffusion of key cultural structures, such as religion, across a large territory. Indeed, the Islamic states of the Middle East or even Eastern Eurasia are one example of a cultural system as much as geo-political and geo-economic system; the Catholic church in the Holy Roman Empire is another example of a geo-cultural inter-societal system, especially after the collapse of Rome, and the breakup of what became Europe into a series of feudal systems that would take a thousand years to become geo-political and geo-economic systems. The theoretical ideas that we develop will focus on three forms of inter-societal systems. Again, there can be other bases for inter-societal systems to evolve but these three have been the most common. By developing models and theoretical principles on these three types of inter-societal system, we can make progress in developing a general theory of inter-societal systems. In the next two chapters, we review some of the important contributions from existing WSA, as well as others doing historical/sociological work that can contribute to our efforts at developing a more abstract and general theory of inter-societal systems. Then, in Chaps. 5, 6 and 7 we will begin to introduce our theoretical ideas. In the Epilogue, we will offer some closing remarks to make WSA more theoretical and capable of predicting and explaining inter-societal dynamics.

References

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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. Berger, Joseph, and Morris Zelditch, Jr. (eds.). 1985. Status, Rewards, and Influence. Jossey-Bass. Collins, Randall. 2022. Explosive Conflict: Time-Dynamics of Violence. New York and London: Routledge. Lenski, Gerhard. 1964. Power and Privilege: A Theory of Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lenski, Gerhard. 2005. Ecological-Evolutionary Theory: Principles & Applications. New York: Routledge. McCaffree, Kevin. 2022. The Dance of Innovation: Infrastructure, Social Oscillation, and the Evolution of Societies. New York: Routledge. Nolan, Patrick, and Gerhard Lenski. 2021. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Ridgeway, Cecilia. 2001. Inequality, status, and the construct of status beliefs. In: Handbook of Sociological Theory, ed. Johnathan H. Turner. Boston: Springer. Spencer, Herbert. 1874. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1972. Patterns of Social Organization: A Survey of Social Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1998. Some elementary principles of geo-politics and geo-economics. EuraAmerican: Journal of European and American Studies 28: 41–71. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2002. Face-to-Face: Toward a Sociological Theory of Interpersonal Behavior. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Turner, Johnathan H. and Alexandra Maryanski. 2008. On the Origins of Societies by Natural Selection. Boulder: Paradigm. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.

Chapter 2

Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques

The revival in theorizing inter-societal dynamics and formations in the 1960s and 1970s has stressed that a world-system emerged during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with (1) the intensification of power and resource differentials between societies and (2) the emergence of markets and money as the primary medium of economic exchange. The geo-political formations of the modern world-system are thus built from patterns of domination of the polities of one society over other societies, often forming empires in which a central polity exploits through tribute and other means for extracting resources from less powerful societies. Similarly, geo-economic formations have emerged when exchanges of resources among societies are regularized through markets in a pattern where dominant economies and polities can use markets, often coupled with political coercion, to extract valued resources from more dependent societies. Accordingly, this conceptualization of inter-societal formations led to a dramatic upsurge in both empirical and theoretical work on the modern world-system in the social sciences, especially in sociology. Yet, as we noted in Chap. 1, the resurgence of work on geo-political and geo-economic dynamics in inter-societal systems has often been more descriptive rather than explanatory. And, more importantly, contemporary theorizing of inter-societal systems has been biased toward geo-political and geo-economic dynamics over the last five hundred years with the emergence of capitalism and the unequal exchanges among dominant and dependent societies. While such an emphasis is historically and theoretically important, it tends to ignore or underemphasize the fact that similar dynamics have existed, albeit on a much smaller scale, among human societies since the beginning of human societies 400,000 years ago (c.f. Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993; Chase-Dunn et al. 2015). Thus, contemporary world-systems analysis imposes an unnecessary scope condition—variations in economic and political power of dominant over weaker societies via markets and coercion in the contemporary capitalist world economy. If a more general explanatory theory of inter-social systems is to be developed, then we need to create generalized models of inter-societal systems explaining all types and forms of inter-societal dynamics that have existed among modern and pre-modern societies. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_2

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The last five hundred years is a special, but a limited case of what has been occurring for hundreds of thousands of years. In many ways, current world-system analysis tends to posit a “theory” of the evolution of capitalism over the last five hundred years which, when examined closely, is more of a historical description than an explanatory theory. For us, this perspective of inter-societal systems is too time-bounded. Additionally, contemporary world-systems theorizing explicitly draws on a Marxian model of inter-societal stratification and inequality which introduces a degree of ideological bias toward assumptions about the nature of inter-societal exchange, the direction evolution of inter-societal systems, and the nature of the world-system in the future. For the present, we will begin by outlining the contours of contemporary world-systems theory by some of its early founders. Later, we can examine variants of these foundational approaches, especially since they will provide a means for expanding the scope of contemporary world-systems analysis. Our goal is not to reject current conceptualizations of inter-societal dynamics but, instead, to incorporate key insights evident in this now very large literature into a different kind of theorizing couched at a much higher level of abstraction than is normally the case with the current world-systems analysis (WSA). Overall, the main purpose of this book is to develop a more abstract and general theory of inter-societal systems for explaining relations between societies since the inception of human societies. To do so, we need to critique existing approaches with an eye to reformulating the insights of contemporary world-systems theorizing. In the next chapter, we revisit early foundational sociologists who had more general theories of inter-societal dynamics than most contemporary theorists. Moreover, we will highlight those contemporary sociologists who have begun to break away from the orthodoxy of much of present-day world-systems and who have developed important insights that can be integrated into a new kind of theorizing on inter-societal dynamics that avoids some of the problems that we will outline later in this chapter. Accordingly, we address the implicit ideological bias in much of this theorizing that quietly but persistently views the modern world-system as revealing the contradictions emphasized by Marx that will lead to a new promised land: world-level socialism. Our view is that this is an implicit, and often explicit over-reach, that is not supported by data or more general theories of inter-societal dynamics. Thus, while we believe that the last decades of world-systems analysis have been enormously important, it is time to re-assess many of the assumptions and biases inhering in theorizing and research with an eye to moving toward a more value-neutral effort at developing a more general theory of inter-societal relations, for all times and all places. In so doing, we can develop a more robust theory while, at the same time, incorporating the many important insights on inter-societal systems which have been developed over the last 50 years in the social sciences.

2.1 Immanuel Wallerstein’s and World-Systems Analysis

2.1

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Immanuel Wallerstein’s and World-Systems Analysis

Although Immanuel Wallerstein was not the first scholar to develop a theory of inter-societal relations, he was the most influential in shaping the direction of contemporary approaches to conceptualizing and analyzing inter-societal systems. Drawing on the early work on dependency theory (e.g., Frank 1969, 1978, 1979a, b), Wallerstein’s (1974a, b) perspective begins with a fundamental critique of early theories and conceptions of “modernization” that had dominated both scholarly and applied work on economic development and democratization in developing societies during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, modernization theories offered a model of social progress where societies evolved along a unilineal path from “traditional” to “modern” and became socially differentiated, economically advanced, and democratic. Therefore, societies should converge toward a common socio-economic and socio-political model as seen in the United States and Western Europe. Wallerstein (1974a, b, 1980, 1988) contended that the modernization of “traditional” societies was not possible because of the emergence of a modern world-system. In this modern world-system, traditional societies are too dependent on exploitive relations of developed societies, with this dependence leading to the reproduction of the internal conditions of underdevelopment in “traditional” societies and perpetuating the international stratification among societies. From this perspective, international stratification among societies is as important as the stratification systems within societies for social development. Overcoming inter-societal stratification was to be the key to the widespread development and perpetuation of “traditional” societies. In many ways, WSA simply shifted the unit of Marxist analysis of revolutions within societies as being contingent on a “revolution” in which the path to socialism rested on exposing the “contradictions” of capitalism but is now conceived as a capitalist world-system filled with contradictions that would ignite the revolution to world-level socialism. Put simply, Wallerstein’s perspective identified the structure of international stratification as the most important driver of inter-societal inequalities and stratification; and by the 1980s, sociologists had abandoned “modernization theories” that had rested on extending the benefits of capitalism and democracy to the rest of the underdeveloped world. Such would not be possible with world-level capitalism as a driving force of stratification both within and between societies. According to Wallerstein, a central proposition of WSA is societies are embedded in a dense network of economic relations defined by the unequal exchange of commodities, services, and investment. Moreover, the development of societies within the world-system is contingent on their relative position in these networks of economic exchange where the patterns of domination and exploitation among societies are as important to their development as the internal characteristics of each society. Thus, WSA identifies the world-system as the primary unit of analysis which is organized into a tripartite stratification system in which societies

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are classified by one of the following structural positions: the dominant core, the peripheral societies dominated by the core, and the semi-periphery societies that operate as an intermediary between the core and periphery. Based on this tripartite structure of the capitalist world economy in WSA, inter-societal systems are defined as a hierarchy of societies that are reproduced by asymmetrical and exploitative exchanges among core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral societies. Societies in the core are economically developed with high levels of technology, capital formation, production, and political power. These societies contain large and sophisticated economies with strong consumer markets, skilled labor forces, advanced technology for leading manufacturing and service sectors, and elaborate infrastructures. Additionally, core societies contain strong states with highly advanced militaries. In contrast, peripheral societies are defined by weak states and small and traditional economies with weak consumer markets, unskilled labor forces, specialization in resource extraction and agricultural production, and poorly developed infrastructures. As a result, societies in the periphery are underdeveloped with low levels of capital formation, technology, labor skills, and infrastructure development; and as a result, they are exploited by actors in the core (and semi-periphery) who seek cheap resources and labor, the result of which is to put these societies in a perpetual state of exploitation and, hence, underdevelopment. The semi-periphery is composed of industrializing and transitioning societies that exhibit a mixture of core and peripheral characteristics, and in fact, often eventually evolve into core societies (e.g., the United States and China) evidencing dramatic infrastructural development, complex social structural differentiation, and cultures driven by high technologies. Thus, semi-peripheral societies contain economies with a mixture of core and peripheral features with emerging consumer markets, semi-skilled labor forces, technology for light manufacturing, routine services, and resource extraction. What they need is more capital, technology, and more extensive infrastructures to spawn further development to core status in the world-system of stratified societies. For Wallerstein and WSA, however, economic trade and investment relations among the core, semi-periphery, and periphery are perpetually exploitative and reproduce international stratification among contemporary societies, thereby blocking the mobility of most peripheral societies to semi-periphery and then to core. Specifically, WSA draws on the concept of unequal exchange from dependency theory (e.g., Frank 1966) to conceptualize how trade and investment among the core, semi-periphery, and periphery reproduce the underdevelopment of the periphery while advancing the core through re-appropriating surplus capital from the periphery to the core. However, a critical distinction between world-systems and dependency perspective is the intermediation of core–peripheral relations by semi-peripheral societies. The semi-periphery performs an important function in the modern world-system in mediating the exploitive relationship between core and periphery which creates a degree of stability in the international stratification system. Despite an overt emphasis on the capitalist world economy in Wallerstein’s WSA, we argue, along with others, that inter-societal systems have existed since the inception of human societies beginning with bands of hunter-gathers interacting

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with each other through exchange and, less frequently, warfare (e.g., Turner 2010a, b: 289; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Abrutyn and Turner 2022). However, for Wallerstein (1974b: 390), these early inter-societal systems were not world-systems, but rather “mini inter-societal systems”—a small-scale social system encompassed a set of societies in an inter-societal division of labor often within a single cultural framework. Wallerstein suggests these systems are not full-scale inter-societal systems because they are not structured into a tripartite hierarchy of core, semi-periphery, and periphery. Accordingly, the analysis of inter-societal systems, according to Wallerstein, should be dedicated to studying relations among only societies in a core–periphery hierarchy. It is this problematic assumption that has spawned our interest in writing this book. For Wallerstein, “world systems” emerged as large-scale social systems encompassing a set of multiple cultural systems into a complex division of labor. As such, these world-systems came in two forms: world empires and world economies. A world empire is an inter-societal system with large bureaucratic structures, a single political center, and a centrally determined division of labor (we will refer to these as geo-political formations). A world economy is a more decentralized division of labor with multiple political centers linked together in patterns of market exchanges (Wallerstein 1987: 204; we will refer to these as geo-economic formations). From this perspective, the period of 10,000 B.C.–1500 A.D. was defined by the absorption of mini-systems and world-economies into the world empires through military conflict, alliances, and establishment of tributary systems. However, world-empires were presumed to be limited in their capacity to expand and would, therefore, always reach a point where the central authority’s power would crumble in response to logistical loads relating to unmet demands stemming from population growth and/or the production/reproduction and distribution of goods and services. Accordingly, Wallerstein’s WSA contends inter-societal systems evolved from historical world empires into a modern capitalist world economy (Turner and Machalek 2018).

2.2

The Evolution of the Modern World-System

The evolutionary dynamics of the modern world-system is defined by a series of historical stages which are driven by a series of hegemonic cycles and economic fluctuations. Wallerstein (1974b: 406) argues the capitalist world economy emerged in four historical epochs: (1) the emergence of capitalism in the sixteenth century, (2) the Western political consolidation of capitalism after 1650, (3) the transition from agricultural to industrial modes of production in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and (4) the emergence of the contemporary international division of labor and governance institutions after the first world war. These “epochs” of the capitalist world economy also coincided with hegemonic cycles of core states and international warfare. The first hegemonic cycle was the rise and fall of the Dutch

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empire, which culminated in the Napoleonic wars. This was followed by the second cycle of the rise and fall of the British empire, which culminated in the first world war. And, following the second world war, the third hegemonic cycle of the capitalist world economy began with the rise of the United States and, more recently, the perpetual decline of U.S. economic and military power (Wallerstein 2003). Additionally, these hegemonic cycles encompassed a series of long-run business cycles of global economic growth and a contraction (Kondratieff waves) and varying cycles of globalization defined by the expansion and contraction of the world-system (Chase-Dunn 1989; Chase-Dunn et al. 2000). Giovanni Arrighi is an important scholar who elaborated upon the basic evolutionary dynamics of inter-societal systems outlined by Wallerstein.1 Specifically, Arrighi (1994) extended this evolutionary dynamic of the modern world-system with the concept of systemic cycles of accumulation. Following the orthodox Marxian conceptualization of production (capital–commodity–capital), Arrighi argued that the modern world-system evolved through successive and overlapping cycles of hegemony and the material expansion and contraction of hegemonic core states in which finance capital and state power take on new forms and increasingly expand the whole system. This cyclical dynamic and evolution of the modern world-system is defined by two general events which distinctly mark the transition between phases within cycles and in transition between cycles themselves. “Signal crises” are events which mark the transition within the current regime of an accumulation from investing in commodity markets to investing in meta-markets in which media facilitating exchange (e.g., money and other financial instruments) in one market can become the commodity exchange in a meta-market (see Collins 1990; Braudel 1977). “Terminal crises” are the major events when regimes accumulation collapse and are incapable of reproducing themselves (Arrighi 1994: 215). Based on this framework, Arrighi argues that the evolution of the capitalist world economy is defined by four major system cycles of accumulation in which the interest of economic and political elites in hegemonic core states was consolidated and, then, eventually disintegrated—e.g., (1) the rise and fall of Genoese finance and the Spanish empire; (2) the rise and fall of the East India Company and the Dutch empire; (3) the rise and fall of the British empire and free trade imperialism; and (4) the rise and decline of U.S. hegemony and the free enterprise system. The next systemic cycle of accumulation remains somewhat unknown. However, Arrighi (2007) predicts the disintegration of U.S. hegemony and increasing dependence on the Chinese economy will facilitate the emergence of a multi-polar market system and decline in international stratification. In contrast, Wallerstein (2003) expected the contemporary structural crises of the modern world to cause the “end of capitalism.” More specifically, he argued the capitalist world economy is unable to resolve the decline in the average rate of profit caused by rising wages, rising cost of material inputs from environmental

1

There are, of course, many others who also contributed which we discuss in Chap. 3.

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degradation, and increasing taxation. In the past, new regimes devised strategies for combating these trends (industrial automation, outsourcing, state retrenchment) but these strategies have become ineffective for resolving contemporary structural crises. Therefore, Wallerstein calls the next five decades “The Age of Transition” (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996; Wallerstein 2003), where world-system will either institutionalize a new mode accumulation or fall into a long-term state of instability. However, Wallerstein and other world-systems scholars continue to expect a transition to a global socialist world-system based on the ideologies and politics of anti-systemic movements (Chase-Dunn and Roberts 2012; Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000; Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996; Wallerstein 1998). The stability of the modern world-system remains an important question given the crises outlined by Wallerstein and others. However, given the state of contemporary WSA and theorizing of inter-societal systems, the future of the capitalist world economy is unclear because WSA lacks modeling and theoretical tools to explain the trajectory of inter-societal systems. Accordingly, most predictions within WSA are based on simple speculations. Therefore, to improve our predictions for the next inter-societal system, we need to develop a more generalized and explanatory theory of inter-societal systems and dynamics. This is a fundamental goal of our book. Thus, we begin by outlining the roots of contemporary WSA; the limitations of this approach; and the need to examine the beginning of inter-social relations and dynamics. In the next chapter, we review important past and contemporary approaches to theorizing inter-social dynamics and then begin to build a more synthetic, generalized, and explanatory theory of inter-societal systems.

2.3 2.3.1

The Theoretical Roots of World-System Analysis Imperialism and Capitalism as a Global System

The origins of Wallerstein’s WSA reside directly in dependency theorizing which is built on the core concept of imperialism by dominant core societies through unequal exchange with less developed societies, and the growing dependency of these peripheral societies on the core. Early works by Hobson (1902) and Lenin (1917) had conceptualized imperialism by extending Marxist theorizing of capitalism to the analysis of inter-societal systems. The dynamics of such systems were seen to revolve around imperialism by highly developed capitalist societies, which was seen as a function of these developed societies’ overproduction, surplus capital, and the consolidation of economic and political interests. According to Hobson, imperialism refers to the subjugation of “uncivilized” non-capitalist states by (a) destroying their traditional institutions and (b) introducing markets and commodity production. More generally, Lenin defines this as the “monopoly stage of capitalism” where stronger states politically and economically dominate weaker states to resolve the internal contradictions of capitalism. Gilpin (1987: 39) provides

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a useful summary of this early perspective of inter-societal systems with the following proposition: As capitalist economies mature, as capital accumulates, and as profit rates fall, the capitalist economies are compelled to seize colonies and create dependencies to serve as markets, investment outlets, and sources of food and raw materials. In competition with one another, they divide up the colonial world in accordance with their relative strengths.

From this early perspective, inter-societal systems emerge from the political and economic subordination of weaker non-capitalist societies by stronger, more highly developed capitalist societies, which resolve the fundamental need for new commodity markets and investment outlets for capitalist expansion. The growth in domestic productivity and concentration of wealth and income created conditions of under-consumption and declining returns to investment in capitalist societies. Colonizing and subjugating traditional societies resolved this problem of over-production and under-consumption by creating outlets for foreign investment and the cultivation of new consumer markets in these less developed countries. However, traditional societies lacked modern institutions for capitalism and resisted foreign economic advancement in their societies. As a result, the governments of highly developed capitalist societies engaged in direct political intervention into traditional and non-capitalist societies to incorporate and control new populations and geographies in circuits of production and consumption while establishing new institutions that were conducive to capitalist production and consumption. Overall, this early perspective defined inter-societal geo-political and geo-economic dynamics as “exploitative” because the exchange relationships between capitalist and traditional societies allowed capitalist societies to extract resources from the dependent while, at the same time, keeping them dependent and unable to create sufficient capital, technology, and productive capacity. This conceptualization of inter-societal systems has directly informed WSA in the second half of the twentieth into the twenty-first century. Prior to Wallerstein, Oliver Cox’s work during the early and mid-twentieth century extended this early perspective of inter-societal systems by re-conceptualizing capitalism as a global system which emerged during the sixteenth century. Surprisingly, Cox’s contribution to the development of WSA is incredibly understated especially given his conceptualization of capitalism as an inter-societal system. In The Foundations of Capitalism, Cox (1959) contends “capitalism tends to form a system or network of national and territorial units bound together by commercial and exploitative relationships in such a way that a capitalist nation is inconceivable outside this capitalist system” (p. 15). However, in contrast to Wallerstein’s model of inter-social systems, Cox (1959) emphasized the importance of geo-political dynamics in the development of capitalism. Cox argues the origins of capitalism can be traced to early Venetian society where ruling elites established a stable government based on the rule of law to protect the interest of wealthy merchants in the city-state. And, over time, the capitalist system expanded in geographic scale with the transition from small-scale commercial markets in

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Venice to the mercantilism of the Spanish and Dutch Empires and to the industrialization of the English empire. For Cox (1959: 78), geo-economic dynamics were central to this expansion. He argues that modern capitalism required expansive international trade where “capitalism sets in motion by its foreign trade, produced all sorts of consumptive demands at home, which was naturally satisfied by the trader.” This emphasis on international trade as the driving force behind the expansion of capitalism directly draws on Marx’s early theorization of the endless expansion of commodity and labor markets to mitigate the internal contradiction of the capitalist mode of production. However, unlike Marx, Cox identified the primary unit of analysis for theorizing capitalism as the entire world rather than the discrete nation-state. This analytical approach would provide the foundation for dependency theory and WSA in sociology.

2.3.2

Dependency Theory and Unequal Exchange

Drawing on the work of Marx, Lenin, Hobson, and others, a new theoretical perspective emerged in the 1950s to explain the persistence of international inequality and uneven economic development across countries during a period of de-colonialization. Based on the early imperialist conceptualization of capitalism and inter-societal systems, dependency theorists argued that contemporary international inequality is a function of power asymmetries and unequal economic exchange between societies. Like Hobson and Lenin, this perspective argued that highly developed capitalist societies exploit traditional societies and foster dependent relations. However, this perspective departs from Hobson and Lenin by arguing this exploitation and dependency is a function of asymmetrical international trade and investment rather than direct political coercion and colonization. According to the dependency perspective, international trade and investment between advanced capitalist societies and traditional societies fosters both the underdevelopment of traditional societies and their economic dependence on capitalist societies. Initially formulated as the “Prebisch-Singer Hypothesis,” the concept of unequal exchange in trade and investment relations is central to understanding the persistence of international inequality and underdevelopment of traditional societies. Here, the unequal exchange of international trade refers to differences in the price of commodities exchanged between highly developed capitalist and traditional societies where the price of exported raw materials and food products from traditional societies to capitalist societies precipitously declined relative to the price of imported manufacturing goods from capitalist societies to traditional societies (Singer 1950; Prebisch 1950). This exchange of primary commodities for manufacturing goods re-appropriated surplus value from traditional societies to capitalist societies, thereby providing capitalist societies with the requisite capital to invest in new production technologies, research, and the development of advanced manufacturing techniques. As a result, capitalist societies

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monopolize manufacturing industries by creating high barriers to entry. At the same time, the extraction for surplus capital from traditional societies reduced their ability to invest capital into manufacturing processes and upgrading their indigenous productive capacities. Accordingly, economic growth in traditional societies was retarded, while growth in capitalist societies accelerated during the first half of the twentieth century. A central proposition of the dependency perspective is that geo-economic dynamics will induce stratification in the capitalist inter-societal system between (a) an industrialized “center” composed of the most developed capitalist countries (e.g., the United States and Western Europe) and (b) an underdeveloped “periphery” composed of former European and U.S. colonies (e.g., Latin America). Based on this simple dichotomy, the capitalist inter-societal system is defined by an international division of labor in which societies in the center specialize in the production of manufacturing goods and advanced services, and the periphery specializes in the production of food and raw materials at low prices (Prebisch 1959). Most importantly, this international division of labor fosters an asymmetry in economic power between the center and periphery of the system where societies in the center monopolize manufacturing industries with high barriers to entry which, in turn, limits the ability of dependent societies to compete in these industries. At the same time, the periphery specializes in extractive and agricultural industries which are highly competitive because of low barriers to entry. As a result, societies in the center can selectively establish trade relations with societies in the periphery for importing raw materials and food, while societies in the periphery are very limited in their ability to select trade partners for importing manufacturing goods. A key proposition of this perspective is an enduring asymmetry in international trade and investment between the center and periphery, as well as the inability of the latter to compete in manufacturing facilitates. The asymmetry arises from the economic dependence of the periphery on the core. Accordingly, peripheral societies do not have well-developed and differentiated commodity markets, meta-markets, or service systems (e.g., banking, insuring, marketing, trading) of their own, or developed infrastructures which, in turn, makes them vulnerable to political and/or economic coercion from societies in the center that have more developed and differentiated markets, meta-markets, infrastructures, and/or influence over intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Turner 2017: 665). Baran (1957) summarizes this perspective by arguing that economic development in the periphery was hindered by a growing dependence on the core. Specifically, the monopolization of capital and production technologies by the core leads to reduced investment by the core in the periphery’s infrastructure or broader manufacturing base; and without this investment by the core, governments in the periphery cannot develop and compete with other societies in manufacturing. And the reliance on the center for manufacturing goods ensures peripheral societies become “trapped” in exploitive trade and investment, typically selling valuable resources to the core at low prices that cannot generate the needed capital for the development of peripheral societies. Thus, societies in the center leverage their

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greater economic and political influence to extract greater surplus from the periphery at low prices that inevitably stall economic development in periphery and increasingly make peripheral societies even more dependent on the center or core. This model of economic dependence in inter-societal systems is analogous to a parasite–host model of interaction where the degree of exploitation between the center and periphery reaches an equilibrium point over repeated interactions. The dependency perspective rose to prominence in the 1960s as a direct and critical response to “modernization” theories that were formulated in the 1950s and remained prominent until the late 1970s. According to modernization theories, international trade and investment should induce a cross-national convergence in development as traditional societies adopt modern institutions to attract foreign capital and upgrade production for manufacturing goods. In contrast, dependency theory argues international trade and investment maintains international stratification and the peripheral status of traditional societies through unequal exchange and the international division of labor. For example, Frank (1966) argues the underdevelopment of peripheral countries is not due to the maintenance of pre-capitalist institutions and the shortage of domestic capital. On the contrary, underdevelopment is a feature of the capitalist world economy and the advancement of core countries. Therefore, the development of the capitalist world economy is defined by the monopolization of capital and production technologies in the center and the extraction of resources from the periphery through unequal trade and investment. However, it might be argued that dependency works, to some extent, bi-directionally: poorer, power-disadvantaged peripheral countries depend on richer, power-advantaged core countries for investment, manufacturing goods, and leverage in international markets, while core countries are dependent on peripheral countries for cheap labor and access to natural resources. Dependency theorists typically presume that benefits in capital and global influence accrue linearly to core countries; and even where core countries invest in the infrastructure or labor of peripheral countries, loan interest or trade pricing is worked into such deals so that any surplus value is ensured to flow to core countries. And the orthodox dependency theorists often insist that the economic and political development of peripheral countries is necessarily hampered or prevented by core countries pursuing their own economic and political self-interest (e.g., Frank 1967). Yet, as Wallerstein outlined in his typology of the international division of labor in the modern world-system, development can occur in dependent societies, as is often the case with semi-peripheral societies that can negotiate more favorable trade relations with the core and, in so doing, acquire capital and technologies that can fuel their own development, especially infrastructures for increased production and distribution, often through acting as brokers between other underdeveloped societies and the core.

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2.3.3

2 Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques

Exchange Theorizing in Sociology

Dependency theory and WSA implicitly adopt and incorporate key theoretical ideas from several exchange theories in sociology. However, these perspectives’ ideological commitment to the view of advanced capitalist societies as exploiting traditional societies (just as Marx saw the bourgeois as exploiting the proletariat) hinders the development of a more value-neutral exchange theoretic for explaining inter-societal relations. While exploitation no doubt occurred, dependency theory and WSA codified exploitation as a universal truth that was a more nuanced varied process into a hard-core ideological assumption that was not subject to scrutiny. The fact that many societies did develop during this period suggests that a new kind of theorizing is necessary where a variable like “exploitation” is just that: something that varies in intensity in relation to other forces outlined in WSA that also vary. Too much of WSA is categorizations of “states of existence” without sufficient attention to the variability of these “states” as they are affected by other varying states of social organization. Accordingly, we aim to recast dependency theory and WSA using a more general theoretical approach which avoids the pervasive ideological bias in these perspectives. The most relevant theoretical approach to inter-societal exchange is the power dependence theory of Emerson (1962), which was developed to explain small group interactions. However, like any good theory, this approach can explain relations among larger collective actors as well, such as nation-states and organizations within them. Such is the property of a good theory: the capacity to offer explanations across dramatically different scales, in the case of power dependence theory between face-to-face interaction in encounters, the smallest unit studied by sociologists to the largest unit examined by sociologists—the world-system. The critical property of a good theory is the level of abstraction because, in many cases, it is not the units that determine the theory, as is the case with WSA, but the nature of the relations among units—as Georg Simmel posited over a century ago. In our view, dependency theory was probably closer to the mark as an actual theory than world-systems theory that, for us, is a strange mixture of a Weberian ideal type with Marx’s assertions about the contradictions of capitalism. The core concepts in Emerson’s power-dependence theory are (1) power, (2) power use, and (3) balancing. When a dominant actor engages in exchange relations with actors who depend on this dominant actor for needed resources, this actor will possess power over these dependent actors. Dependency is related to (a) the value of the resources held by a dominant actor (e.g., the “capitalist core” in world-systems analysis) and (b) the lack of alternatives among dependent actors for these resources (e.g., the monopolization of key manufacturing industries by core economies). Put simply, when dependence is high for key resources and alternatives for these resources by other actors is low, the power of actors with the desired resources is high. If actors are mutually dependent on each other, then each actor has some power over the other, but when a resource-rich actor has more power over

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other actors (who are more dependent on this one actor), resource-rich actor will engage in power use and increase demands for resources from dependent actors seeking the resources of the dominant actor. Power use, in essence, entails the exploitation of dependent actors. And one can easily see the ghost of Marx and dependency arguments in this exchange theory, but unlike Marx and Franks and others, such as Robinson (2004, 2008, 2014), there is no ideology in Emerson’s theory and similar theories like the one outlined by Blau (1964). Table 2.1 delineates the theoretical propositions of Emerson and a generalized theory of exchange and power. Under conditions of exploitation, dependent actors have a limited set of options if they are to achieve a more equitable exchange of resources, including (1) decreasing the value of the resources held by the actor engaged in power use; (2) searching and finding alternative actors with the same resources held by an actor engaged in power use; (3) increasing the value of the resources they hold and provide for the power-use actor; and (4) finding ways to reduce the access of power use actor to alternative sources of the resources held by dependent actors. Emerson does not mention a fifth option, which is implied in Blau’s model, and the generalized Marxian theory stated as propositions in Table 2.2 on page 40: engaging in coercive actions to secure resources from power-using, exploitive actors. There are additional elements in Emerson’s theory, but this brief outline is sufficient to make a few key points. First, this theory can be applied to individual people and to collective actors engaged in exploitive exchange and power relations. This is an important point because, as we will document and argue later in this Table 2.1 Richard Emerson’s basic theory on power-dependent relations 1. The more actor B is in an unbalanced exchange with actor A, whereby actor B is dependent upon A for a given resource and where B has (i) no other alternatives for the resources provided by A and (i) can do without these resources provided by A, the greater is the imbalance in the exchange 2. The more imbalanced in the exchange relationship between A and B, the more actor A can engaged in exploitation of actor B, seeking more of the resources provided by B in exchange for the same or even less of the resources provided by A 3. The more this condition of dependence and exploitation persists, the more motivated actor B will become to balance the exchange relationship by engaging in one or more of the following balancing operations: A. Actor B can decrease the value of resources provided by actor A, thereby reducing actor B’s dependence on actor A B. Actor B can increase the number of alternative sources for the resources provided by A, thereby reducing dependence on A and, thereby, increase B’s bargaining power by putting multiple sources (A-1, A-2, A-3, etc.) into competition with each other for providing resources to B C. Actor B can attempt to increase the value of the resources that it provides for A, thereby increasing A’s dependence on B for resources provided by B D. Actor B can seek to reduce the alternative providers of the resources that B provides for A, thereby making actor A more dependent on B Adapted from Emerson (1962)

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Table 2.2 Peter Blau’s proposition on conflict dynamics in exchange 1. The probability of opposition to those with power increases when exchange relations between super-ordinates and subordinates becomes imbalanced, with such imbalance increasing when: A Norms of reciprocity are violated by super-ordinates B Norms of fair exchange are violated by super-ordinates 2. The probability of opposition to super-ordinates increases as the sense of deprivation among subordinates increases, with this sense of deprivation increasing when subordinates can collectively experience their sense of deprivation. Such escalate deprivation increases when: A Subordinates are ecologically and spatially concentrated B Subordinates can communicate with one another 3. The more deprivations of subordinates are ideologically codified, the greater is the sense of solidarity among subordinates, and the more likely are subordinates to oppose those with power; and the greater the ideological solidarity, the more opposition is likely to become an end in itself Note By simply making the units in this exchange relations among populations of different societies in unequal power relations, Marx’s basic ideas as codified by Blau can be generalized to inter-societal dynamics, which is the goal of many working with WSA Adapted from Blau (1964)

chapter, one shortcoming of contemporary WSA is the inability to explain the dynamics of inter-societal systems operating on a much smaller scale, whereas Emerson’s theory can be adapted to do so.2 In fact, we argue contemporary WSA is not highly theoretical; rather, it is a classification system of roles within an international division of labor and a theoretical description of historical events, which presumes exploitive relations will ultimately lead to actors in the peripheral and semi-peripheral to engage in counter actions against the actors core. As such, there is no theoretical dynamic or mechanism specified to explain these processes. Instead, contemporary WSA assumes power differences between actors will lead to conflict and re-alignment of a world-system (often on a more socialistic basis). Second, in addition to this vagueness and ideological assertion about the rise of world socialism, Wallerstein’s WSA ignores very early inter-societal relations among simpler hunting and gathering, including settled hunter-gatherers, because these societies do not meet the scope conditions specified by Wallerstein and others (c.f. Chase-Dunn and Halls 1993; Inoue et al. 2012). As we will outline later in this chapter, archaeological data show inter-societal exchange has been present since the inception of human patterns of social organization. Therefore, we need a more generalized theory of inter-societal dynamics to explain these early exchange processes dynamics. However, as noted earlier, contemporary WSA is more of a historical description of the rise of capitalism and intensification of international inequalities than an explanatory. Specifically, contemporary WSA aims to describe an inter-societal system of capitalism based on economic and political exploitation that crystallizes

2

Indeed, Emerson left the small group near the end of his life to explain larger-scale historical sociocultural formations, like feudalism, with his power dependence theory.

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into a simple typology of modern societies (core, periphery, and semi-periphery). Additionally, contemporary WSA simply implies what dependency and exchange theory sees as key underlying dynamics revolving around power dependence. Indeed, the conception of semi-peripheral societies represents one balancing operation that has occurred in the modern world-system (and indeed in less modern inter-societal systems) As such, it is a very useful conceptualization and allows for interpretation of the last 500 years of world history (in a kind of ideal-type “Weberianization” of Marx), but it is not adequate as a general theory in the scientific sense. A more general theory, like Emerson’s power dependence theory, is useful for explaining the dynamics of inter-societal relations between small and larger societies at varying levels of technology and production. Thus, Wallerstein’s WSA cannot explain the full range of dynamics in inter-societal systems that have existed for most of human history. We argue a generalized and comprehensive theory of inter-societal systems should be able to do so, and hence, we need more theoretical ideas like those from Emerson and Blau to develop such a theory to better understand inter-societal systems from the beginning of human societies to the present day. Our goal in this book is to expand the reach of inter-societal theorizing to the whole spectrum of societies that have organized humans. Indeed, the world-systems tradition leaves a lot unsaid, without specifying the forces changing relations among societies in world-systems composed of core, periphery, and semi-periphery. Emerson’ simple theory, with the extra proposition from Marx and Blau, can handle some cases, at least in a basic sense. From our view, this makes the earlier dependence approach somewhat of a more appealing theory for explaining inter-societal dynamics. Although the dependency perspective is not sufficiently robust and abstract or comprehensive to explain all patterns of inter-societal relations in human social organization, it is still very useful because it points to one balancing operation by which societies reduce dependency and exploitation by dominant societies. Our goal in this book will be to offer more explanatory models and principles of inter-societal dynamics in general—from those relations among small inter-societal systems through various historical inter-societal systems to the present world-system.

2.4 2.4.1

The Limitations of World-Systems Analysis Descriptive Theorizing

Immanuel Wallerstein’s theory of inter-societal system offers a simple Weberian-type classification system creating “ideal types” in which societies are ranked and categorized into three types: (1) the dominating core; (2) the subordinate and exploited periphery; and (3) the semi-periphery (Kentor 2000). The WSA approach does address dynamics as well, but these are constrained by a typology that does not capture the full variation of societal types and, hence, their dynamics. According to contemporary WSA, tension in the modern world-system is created

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when the core imposes unequal and exploitive exchange on periphery and semi-periphery, and/or imposes political domination. Specifically, this tri-modal stratification of societies, under these exploitive and oppressive conditions, generates resentments in subordinate societies that lead to a potential countermobilization among actors within the periphery or semi-periphery. Given this schema, contemporary WSA draws on Marxist imagery to describe social organization among societies—a stratified system among societies into a tri-modal hierarchy instead of a polarizing system of social classes within societies. And presumably, the conditions specified by Marx for the proletariat can be generalized to the semi-periphery or periphery, but the dynamics specified by Marx are more theoretical. Wallerstein has consistently maintained that world-systems analysis is not a theory (see Babones 2015), but commentators frequently refer to Wallerstein’s efforts as a “theory.”3 Our goal is to address this issue by developing an explanatory theory that draws from WSA’s insights but converts the arguments into abstract models and propositions, which are more theoretical and testable. The reliance of WSA on largely descriptive and essentialist categories from Weber, combined with Marxist theorizing is a fundamental problem for developing an explanatory theory of inter-societal systems. The type of essentialist thinking behind the tripartite structure of core/periphery/semi-periphery diminishes the empirical validity of WSA. The tendency to construe complex entities—from animals to people to countries—in terms of underlying, defining “essences” is also interesting, even intuitively creative, but hardly explanatory (Salomon and Cimpian 2014). Viewing complex entities, not in terms of a complex of continuums and relationships, but in terms of stable dispositions is another means of reducing uncertainty and complexity. However, this essentialism is not conducive to scientific analysis and substantially reduces explanatory power. From a Marxist standpoint, categorizing countries as core, periphery, or semi-periphery is highly valuable analytically. For example, these categories allow us to infer a hierarchy (core at the top, periphery at the bottom) and allow us to infer resource advantages (core has the most power over resources and periphery has the least power). But, as with all essentialized categories, circularities and confusions begin to emerge from this approach (Sanderson 2012). Specifically, a series of circular questions can be leveled at these categories: Why are peripheral countries power-disadvantaged? Because they are peripheral. Why are they peripheral? Because they are power-disadvantaged. And questions about whether the “essences” of the WSA typology are amenable to being re-casted as a continuum emerge: Are richer core countries more core than poorer core countries? Do poorer peripheral countries contain more “peripheralness” than richer peripheral countries? Addressing these issues quickly becomes confusing and difficult which exposes the

3

Even though Wallerstein himself did not portray his efforts as a theory.

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problems of theorizing essentialist categories than theorizing continuums (e.g., Chase-Dunn 1989; Kentor 2000).4 Dependency theory, which precedes Wallerstein’s WSA, comes closer to being an effort at an explanatory theory, especially given its underlying exchange theoretical structure and identification of power dependence in exchange. And so, we contend this earlier approach was more theoretical than the current WSA and provides a firmer basis for developing an explanatory theory of inter-societal systems. Since dependency theory preceded Wallerstein’s model and represented one of the first devastating critiques of “modernization” theory, it continues to influence more contemporary theorists of inter-societal dynamics and systems. Thus, even though dependency theory has been somewhat overshadowed by Wallerstein’s WSA, it offers a much more explicit theory. Despite presumably drawing from Marxist and Leninist theorizing, we argue this perspective resembled exchange theories that were also being developed in sociology during the 1960s and 1970s. And thus, for our purposes, the latter is more useful in developing a general theory of inter-societal dynamics.

2.4.2

The Marxist Ideology of World-Systems Analysis

Before moving to our own efforts in Chaps. 5, 6, and 7 to develop a general theory of inter-societal dynamics, it is important to uncover the ideological basis of contemporary WSA. While contemporary WSA has opened new empirical horizons to explain and introduced innovative ideas and observations to sociological analysis, it remains embedded with underlying ideological tenets. Put simply, WSA remains a Marxian model of inter-societal stratification and inequality, dressed up in Weberian ideal types. Again, while it has proven to be very useful in stimulating new lines of research and conceptualizing, it is not value-neutral. Almost all those engaged in WSA see the modern world-system as undesirable because of the view that it is creating and perpetuating world-level inequalities. However, because of this underlying ideological commitment to Marxist’s vision of social justice, WSA is unable to explain how the modern world-system is, in reality, generating less global inequality because of the economic mobility of dependent societies (e.g., Alderson and Pandian 2018). A key issue with the Marxism of WSA is the under-emphasis of the bidirectionally inter-societal relations—i.e., poorer, power-disadvantaged and resource-rich peripheral countries depend on richer, power-advantaged core countries for investment and leverage in international markets, while core countries are dependent on peripheral countries for cheap labor and access to natural resources.

4 Kentor (2008) extended on their previous work by creating a continuous measurement of “position” within the world economy based on average incomes, economic development, and military expenditures.

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Dependency theorists and WSA typically presume that benefits in capital and global influence accrue linearly and exclusively to core countries even, for example, when core countries invest in the infrastructure or labor of peripheral countries and globally engaged firms in these countries import technologies and upgrade their production activity in value chains. In fact, Firebaugh (2003) notes international trade and investment may have reduced global inequality by increasing the industrialization of developing economies over the last three decades. However, both WSA and the orthodox dependency theorists often insist that the economic and political development of peripheral countries is necessarily hampered or prevented by core countries pursuing their own economic and political self-interest (e.g., Frank 1967). Nonetheless, the dynamics outlined by Emerson’s theory of power dependency in exchange suggest that there are ways to mitigate dependence that also works to the advantage of dependent societies. The ideological basis of WSA presumes exchange is implicitly or explicitly zero-sum and parasitic and, in some extreme cases, framed as if it occurred between good downtrodden countries and evil oppressive countries. This somewhat moralistic framework relies on the—often implicit—notion that countries with nefarious or greedy motivations exploit other nations to advance their power or influence. We should not be surprised that WSA became so popular despite being predicated on zero-sum intuitions from a moralistic framework. In fact, it may have become so popular because of the accessibility of zero-sum intuitions. Some researchers have recently argued that a key component of humans’ folk sociology is that the world is divided into powerful and powerless entities and that powerful entities necessarily impose their will on powerless entities (e.g., Boyer 2018). This is a simple, complexity-reducing heuristic that seems plausible and, in one fell swoop, allows for broad “theoretical” generalizations. Humans are, after all, very emotional primates that evolved in the context of largely egalitarian bands where vigilance against abuses of power was important for group harmony (Boehm 1999; Turner 2021; Abrutyn and Turner 2022). It is not surprising, then, that we should be sensitive to inequality and exploitation. Yet, this intuition serves us poorly when we begin analyzing extremely large and complex systems like political economies. In fact, all one has to do is insist that potential analysts think about why the recipient of an investment or a product might value or utilize this investment or product in order to begin dissolving zero-sum beliefs (Johnson et al. 2021). This suggests that zero-sum intuitions result from a failure to “perspective-take” with entities defined as “powerless.” Not all exchanges, even exchanges between power-imbalanced entities, are necessarily or entirely coercive. In assuming zero-sum exchanges, WSA effectively strips peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of any agency in decision-making processes; they are defined in terms of their destiny to be victims of coercion and exploitation. It is fair to be on the watch for parasitism and coercion in exchanges between power or resource-imbalanced parties, but it is simply not scientific to presume or assume it. The overall general theoretical heuristic—lumped, essentialist categories interacting within largely zero-sum exchanges—continues to influence world-systems theorizing today.

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The Return to Marxism: William Robison’s Critique of World-Systems Analysis

While the notion of the inherent dialectic posited by Marx has always been implicit in WSA, some scholars have taken the analytical approach of Marx and generalized it to the inter-societal level. In so doing they have often taken the ideological baggage of Marxism more explicitly to the global level and argued for the evolution of the global system to world socialism. Robinson (2004) is the most forceful advocate of this view by drawing explicitly on a Marxist framework to contend that contemporary capitalism has evolved and now represents a new historical epoch defined by the trans-nationalization of production and capital accumulation. Consistent with WSA, Robinson argues that capitalism has always operated at the global level as a world-system and that the development of national capitalist economies have always been contingent on the economic and political relations between societies and their relative structural positions in the capitalist world economy. However, in departure from WSA, Robinson argues that contemporary capitalism has rendered national economies irrelevant. More specifically, Robinson (1998, 2001, 2004) argues the globalization of production and investment have expanded circuits of capital accumulation beyond territorial boundaries of nation states—thereby forcing capitalists to move their investments between societies as needed to maximize profits, with no particular interest in localizing investments in any given country. Instead, contemporary manufacturing and services are characterized by the global dispersion of production processes contained within global commodity chains. As a result of the globalization of production and the de-territorialization of capital, WSA has lost its significant explanatory power and, presumably, is no longer the best way to characterize the world capitalist system. As Robinson and Harris (2000) argue, the transition from national production regimes to a transnational production regime represents a historical shift in capitalism which renders the North-South or the core/semi-periphery/periphery distinction irrelevant. This irrelevance of national production diminishes the conceptual utility of the ideal-type typology on the core, semi-periphery, and periphery since the international division of labor is less defined by the stratification of nation-states and more defined by class stratification system in all populations across the globe. For Robinson, the emergence of a transnational economy necessitates a transnational re-working of classical Marxian categories into transnational elites, transnational working classes, and supranational governance institutions (the transnational state). Put simply, this perspective re-conceptualizes the capitalist world economy as a singular social base with a global superstructure and infrastructure. Accordingly, the main analytical concept of this perspective is the transnational capitalist class (TCC) and the transnational working class (TWC). Robinson defines the TCC as the agent of global capitalism in promoting global circuits of accumulation through the massive expansions of multinational corporations and the spread of their affiliates. Over the last five decades, the TCC has increasingly positioned itself as the

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new global ruling class. The formation of the TCC was a direct response of capitalists and ruling elites to the establishment of a social pact between labor and capital in the post-World War II political economy, such as the European welfare state and the New Deal in the United States. The TWC is viewed as “a class in itself” (as opposed to “a class for itself”) because workers engaged in circuits of global production lack full class consciousness and the realization of their mutual interests (Struna 2009). The TWC is composed of a vast array of fractionalized workers who are exploited in global circuits of production, which are independent of nationality since investments by capitalists in production shift to wherever in the world this labor can be found. In Robinson’s work, the transnational state is presented as a new concept for understanding geo-political structure in the capitalist economy. By disregarding national governments as relevant political actors in the capitalist world economy, Robinson contends geo-political analysis should focus on the formation of global configurations of intergovernmental organizations, supranational organizations, and transnational elite factions. And, following Marx, Robinson contends the primary function of these configurations is to facilitate the interests of global elites and the expansion of transnational circuits of production and the accumulation at the expense of not only developing countries but also at the expense of worker’s interest around the world. Not surprisingly, world-system scholars (Arrighi 2001; Moore 2001; Roberts and Struna 2010) have responded that there is no evidence to suggest the interstate system of the world economy is irrelevant and suggests that the persistence of societal stratification would indicate that the WSA is still useful, in the limited sense that we have indicated. It may well be that changes in the modern world-system over the last 50 years suggest that the tripartite stratification of societies into core, semi-periphery, and periphery is less useful. But does this assure the decline of the nation-state, and its evolution into some formal global state? An answer to this question is not clear, but we would argue that, despite globalization and the flow of global capital, the relevance of nation-states as actors in inter-societal dynamics is still very evident and often, as is the case in China today, capable of reining in global economic players. Global capital, as it flows across national boundaries, is still very well controlled by national polities and their legal systems of regulations. And given the current levels of political conflict and likely conflict in the future, it is hard to see the nation-state as becoming subordinated to a supranational state and to an elite global class. If anything, war will increase the salience of state boundaries and state alliances along the front lines of conflict. As we will argue later in this book, geo-politics is very likely to increase in response to tensions between nation-states, despite the interests of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) because these elite are perhaps not as unaffiliated with nation-states as implied in Robinson’s analysis. Moreover, despite their vast wealth, elites still do not have and probably cannot afford what the polities of the dominant nation-state have—an army, air force, and navy that can only exist in the high-tech world of armaments through the taxing and coercive powers of polities on very dense populations.

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Still, Robinson’s analysis is intriguing and, if true, would make less relevant this book on inter-societal dynamics. Perhaps Robinson has taken the ideology and idealism of Marx to a new systemic level but thus far, even as capital flows across nation-states, these states are hardly irrelevant to both economic and political action; and if necessary, they generally have the power to rein in their members in the TCC. Thus, we will seek to develop models and principles of three interrelated inter-societal formations: (1) geo-political formations, (2) geo-economic formations, and (3) geo-cultural formations that can operate in tandem and, under other conditions, at cross-purpose to each other.

2.4.4

The Absence of Geo-Cultural Dynamics

An important and re-emerging criticism of the conceptual basis of world-systems is the minor role of inter-societal geo-cultural systems (e.g., Mueller and Schmitt 2020). According to these recent critics, underlying geo-political and geo-economic dynamics in the modern-world-system are the ideologies, schemas, and beliefs which legitimate the distribution of power and resources across societies and different populations. And drawing on a Marxist perspective of culture, Wallerstein (1990: 38) affirms this conceptualization by arguing culture is a product of our collective historical attempts to come to term with the contradictions, ambiguities, and complexities of the socio-political reality of the capitalist world economy. However, this is a limited view of geo-cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems. For example, the world society perspective shows the importance of global institutions and culture in shaping the normative structures, cultures, and behaviors of individuals in societies (e.g., Meyer 2000). And Chase-Dunn and Halls’ (1993, 1997) concept of “information networks” identifies how expansive chains of human interaction across societies encompass the exchange of goods and even political– military interactions. Accordingly, in understanding the dynamics of geo-political and geo-economic systems, a greater emphasis on geo-cultural systems is necessary. In Chap. 7, we discuss our efforts to isolate the generic features of cultural structures in societies that are relevant to understanding geo-cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems.

2.4.5

Scope Conditions and Pre-modern Inter-Societal Systems

Some theories reveal scope conditions which, in essence, affirm that they are only explaining a delimited part of the social universe. Setting scope conditions is a legitimate practice in science, but sometimes scope conditions cut out the important dimension of the phenomena under study and become a barrier to developing a

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more comprehensive theory of the relevant phenomena. This is the case with WSA which, with few exceptions (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998; Abu-Lughod 1989; Amin 1991; Frank and Gills 1994) confine the analysis to the last five hundred years, or if WSA looks further into the past, it focuses on inter-societal formations emerging from large inequalities in power, resources, and technology among societies, which takes analysis only as far back as the late Holocene. Thus, all inter-societal systems that do not reveal these properties are omitted from analysis and theorizing, thereby making theorizing only applicable to the capitalist world-system and the early inter-societal systems where there is a high degree of inequality among societal actors that began to evolve some 12,000 years ago. Indeed, a consistent theme in Chase-Dunn’s and Mann’s (1998) very useful book, The Wintu and Their Neighbors, analyzing a “very small world system” in northern California, is the finding that there can be sufficient inequality in power and other resources of these small communities of sedentary hunter-gathers, who reveal “leaders” but not Big Men, to meet Wallerstein’s criteria for inter-societal stratification (core and periphery). In fact, these authors describe an inter-societal system revealing more equality in resources but, nonetheless, a system where there is a considerable exchange of resources as well as the assertion of leadership without dramatic inequalities but still a certain amount of conflict and competition among populations, even those speaking the same language. For us, their descriptions describe an inter-societal system or systems, which we view as the most generic phenomenon to be theorized. And we would argue that such systems have emerged throughout human societal history. For, since the very beginnings of human societies, populations have confronted one another and worked out relations among their respective societies, varying from exchange to open conflict, which always involves the consolidation of power and, eventually, at least some inequalities. A theory of inter-societal relations must develop abstract models and propositions for all manifestations of inter-societal relations, even if they do not meet Wallerstein’s criterion for an evolving capitalist system driving “real” world-systems. What Wallerstein and others do, in essence, is cut off most of human history in his analysis, and from our point of view, provide a very interesting analysis of human history over the last, at best, 10,000 years of human societal history that goes back to at least 350,000 if not 400,000 thousand years. Therefore, we do not adhere to the concept of world-system because of the limited definition of this concept, which has important consequences for theorizing. We aim to outline a strategy for developing a general theory of inter-societal dynamics that can encompass all types of human societies since the beginning of human societies. This assertion may seem is too “grand” for many, but from our point of view, world-systems theorizing is too limiting—despite the very high-quality conceptual and empirical work done by so many working in WSA. The scope conditions of WSA dramatically limit the power of the theorizing of inter-societal dynamics and systems that, in our view, can be expanded to include all societal types without losing the rich data and analysis of human history over the last ten thousand years. Indeed, the current WSA is not highly theoretical in a

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scientific sense; it is more descriptive using a heuristic idea-type about the types of societies that form world-systems. To close out this chapter, we describe the range of inter-societal systems that have existed since the very beginnings of human societies. Specifically, we contend simple inter-societal systems among early hunter-gathers and horticulturalists (and variants like herding and fishing) should also be included in efforts to explain the dynamics and properties of inter-societal systems.

2.4.6

The Predictive Power of World-Systems Analysis

The totality of these problems within WSA suggests the predictive validity of the theory is low. And this is especially true when examining the overt prediction of the modern world-system evolving into global socialism (e.g., Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000; Hopkins and Wallerstein 1996; Wallerstein 1998). The specter of Marx continues to haunt WSA in this regard. The progress of capitalism and its internal contradictions producing social change toward communism implicitly pervades predictions for the next world-system. It is essential to move away from this implicit ideology to develop a generalized and explanatory theory for inter-societal dynamics to explain contemporary and future transformations of the modern world-system. This begins with understanding the origins of inter-societal relations among the earliest human populations.

2.5

From the Beginning: The Pervasiveness of Inter-Societal Relations

Humans have been on earth for at least 400,000 years; indeed, there were several sub-species of humans, such as Neanderthal, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens, for many thousands of years, ultimately interbreeding with Homo sapiens or, perhaps, also engaging in inter-societal warfare leading to the extinction of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Additionally, these subspecies also traded and exchanged goods, although it cannot be known if they formed stable systems of trade and governance. In recent years, however, more evidence has emerged about the trading activities of early humans, as is briefly examined below.

2.5.1

The Beginnings of Geo-Economic Relations

East Africa: 500,000–320,000 Years Ago. Archeological evidence that began to emerge in 2002 revealed that, between 320,000 and 500,000 years ago, early humans in East Africa had increasingly begun to use color pigments and more

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sophisticated tools. These tools were 320,000 years ago crafted with great care, moreover, were often specialized compared to the all-purpose hand axes 500,000 years ago. Points on these axes made from sharp-edged volcanic stones were shaped as weapons but others were used for scraping or as awls. What is most interesting is that many of the locations of different peoples did not live where the necessary obsidian sources could be found. Thus, there had to have been trade and exchange with those hunter-gatherers in locations where the glassy black, sharp-edged obsidian existed. Indeed, archeological evidence of bulk obsidian that had yet to be shaped was found in sites of foragers that did not have any indigenous source of obsidian, with the closest sources being 15–55 miles away. Indeed, chemical matching of the excavated artifacts to the source of each batch of obsidian in central and southern Kenya reveals that raw pieces of obsidian had been carried from multiple directions of at least 25–95 km on a straight-line distance but given the rugged terrain of the Rift Valley Kenya, the distances were much greater and clearly must have involved steady patterns of trade over much larger distance. Accordingly, trade networks were created among multiple populations, generating an incipient geo-economic inter-societal system among populations separated by distances beyond the normal distances that individuals walked within their home range. At 500,000 thousand years ago, pre-humans (most likely, Homo erectus) or very early species of humans made much simpler tools without much evidence for trade networks. Yet, 320,000 years ago in clearly documented species of humans, the social universe was expanded by trading arrangements made possible by obsidian hand tools. Indeed, there appear to be new technologies emerging, as various shapes of flakes of obsidian were used to create new varieties of tools, from hand axes to arrow points of varying sizes. Moreover, tools were “color coded” with red and black pigments, suggesting the attachment of additional symbolism to the tools manufactured. It is, of course, impossible to know if these trade relations generated inequalities, with those groups engaging in asymmetrical trade of obsidian. If so, inequality might have led to early geo-political formations, but given that obsidian was also used to make tools that could be weapons, the trade may have been mostly economic, with subpopulations remaining in their locals to engage in their respective foraging activities but using tools provided by neighbors. Moreover, because of the rapidly shifting ecology of the region, the small societies composed of different bands of foragers were probably engaging in exchanges of more than tools to ride out changes in the ecology of these “mini societies.”5 More recent data on the East African Rift Valley, around 200,000 years ago, documents that trade routes may have expanded, with some sites revealing obsidian obtained over 160 km away; and it is likely that more complex forms of

5

Potts, R. The Olorgesailie Project. Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, National Museum of History. There are many additional projects that document the emergence of these early inter-societal systems. See: https://humanorigines.si.edu/research/east-african-research-projects/ evolution-human-innovation.

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inter-societal relations were evolving.6 The key point is that trade, approaching what would be long distances for foragers, emerged and increased in scale and scope in the first human inter-societal formations. And, since we will summarize other findings of trade among more recent foraging populations, where the data are more robust, it is likely that these systems are simply more recent manifestations of inter-societal trade and, perhaps, even warfare and geo-politics had evolved in other parts of the world hundreds of thousands of years before previous estimates. For it is now clear, forms of inter-societal systems evolved very early in human and societal evolution. Thus, the phenomenon to be theorized in this book is indeed universal and hence should be subject to theoretical models and principles. Silent Trade. In 1903, P. J. H. Grierson assembled a short book entitled Silent Trade in which he presents reports from a wide variety of sources on trade among preliterate populations whose members would engage in trade without directly meeting with or talking to trading partners. The book includes forms of less silent trade, but all of the examples illustrate the diversity of trading practices among hunter-gatherers and settled populations of various kinds (former foragers, fishing populations, simple horticulture, etc.). These examples of silent trade come from populations seen by nineteenth-century travelers, anthropologists, explorers, and others interested in populations that probably resembled those that had existed for thousands of years. Indeed, it is very likely that, at least initially, trading may have been silent as individuals moved into the territories where migrating strangers, as well as indigenous inhabitants of unknown territories, could both be seen as dangerous and hostile. Silent trade allowed individuals to trade resources without seeing each other, at least initially until some trust could be established. What is amazing is that without talking to each other and without money or some marker of value, humans could negotiate the exchange of goods. This kind of system would allow individuals or small groups to move far from their home base in search of trading partners, and in so doing, more extensive trading networks could be created that might lead to more stable and enduring inter-societal networks. Silent trading entails one actor or set of actors entering a territory of another population or, alternatively, standing at the symbolic borders of this population and laying down commodities such as animal skins, salt, tools, meat, artistic objects, or anything valued by pre-literate populations, and then retreating out of sight. The potential exchange partners observe these behaviors and then deposit their resources or objects that they are willing to exchange for the quantity and type of resources of the traveling party, and then move out of sight. If the original party offering goods accepts what is offered by those whose territory they are in, then they simply depart with the goods offered by those occupying a territory. It does not take much imagination to see how these kinds of silent trade could be the beginning of a longer term exchange of resources by parties potentially living far apart; and probably over time, the trade becomes less silent and eventually ritualized with exchanges of

6

See Carson (2017).

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symbolic objects marking the trade. Such trade probably emerged early in human societies because it allows parties to scope each other out and establish trade relations involving valued resources from populations living in different locations, without danger of coercion. It is likely that many of the objects traded in the Rift Valley in Kenya, especially those traded at longer distances, began this way.

2.5.2

The Evolution of Markets and Money

There are many variants of silent trade and some of these variants reveal how fast elementary trade can evolve into something that looks like markets using a kind of generalized medium of exchange (for assessing the respective value of objects to be traded). And then, it is not a long step to offering objects in exchange for a generalized medium of exchange, now resembling money that can be used in exchanges within or between territories. Such trade poses risks for those traveling into unknown territories where they do not speak the language of their potential trading partners or the resources that they might be willing to trade (Woodburn 2016)—although they may have a hunch from reports of other travelers about what this potential trading partner is likely to offer. Moreover, this kind of exchange allows mobile populations to trade with settled populations where, after a few trades, both parties learn trading is beneficial without incurring risks. Also, it allows those seeking resources of a given type to travel across the territories of several societies to reach a trading partner who might trade a needed resource, such as salt, obsidian, or tool technologies. And, as the trade of one object for other objects proceed over many transactions, a medium of exchange is created because one or both side of the exchange begins to establish the relative “value” in terms of how many of one object is “worth” in trade for other objects. Some commodities naturally lend themselves to becoming a quasi-currency because they are highly valued among most populations. Salt, obsidian, and furs, for example, have many of the characteristics of money as conceptualized by Jevons (1875: 31): utility/value, portability, indestructability, homogeneity, divisibility, stability in value, and “cognizability.” All of these would be important for pre-literate peoples engaged in longer distant trade. And once a form of money is used at specified locations where trades are to occur on a regular basis, something resembling a market exists. Bronsnan and Beran (2009) argue that the key to creating enduring exchanges, and to institutionalizing trade, is to add third parties as a broker to the exchange. For example, an explorer in lower Niger stopped at a village in search of yams to “purchase.” He was taken to docked canoes of resident traders who were armed, as was the explorer. An older female, carrying herself with authority, brought him the yams. The purchaser selected a bundle of yams and placed beside the yams what he considered to be the equivalent of cloth, flints, etc. If the “broker” considered these objects as equivalent to the yams in payment, she gave the purchaser the bundle. If she thought that it was not equivalent, the purchaser was given another opportunity

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to add something to the payment. No one talked during this negotiation; it was all done through gestures rather than words. But a critical ingredient had been added to the exchange—a broker between buyer and sellers, with the broker taking a commission from the goods exchanged. From this base, elaborations to more dynamic markets can occur, as is the case where commodities to be exchanged are known in advance by both parties and often characterized as “gifts”—thereby adding an extra symbolism to the exchange that reduces tension and affirms the exchange. Much institutionalized exchange among pre-literates carries this added symbolism in order to reduce the possibility of a breach of the exchange and to assure both parties that the exchange will be “fair.” For example, the ritualization of exchanges among North American Big Man societies of settled foragers included this type of symbolism, with the Big Men of two small societies gaining prestige in their “generosity” in exchange relations. Indeed, markets and mediums of exchange began to evolve hundreds of thousands of years ago with at least some populations seeking resources from each other. Early versions of “market towns” were often created locations monitored by the supernatural as safe havens from attacks and warring parties seeking to trade their goods. In fact, warfare was often suspended for exchanges to occur. In several examples offered in Silent Trade, warfare was suspended while trading occurs and then resumed when it is over. In another case, the men continue their tit-for-tat war (each death on one side must be avenged), but on market day, the women of these warring parties went to the established market location to exchange goods. Another variant among the Riff, where the marketplace and roads to it are considered safe from private vengeance, market day suspends all war and vengeance so that everyone can take their goods to sell to other desired goods. Silent trade is now not so silent but these elaborations on silent trade indicate how they can quickly evolve to trade involving quasi-money and brokers in specified market locations, even when populations are engaged in conflict relations. Markets have this power to neutralize conflict because they provide useful services to their clients, even parties at war while being monitored by the gods to assure that no one violates the rules of the market. Long before agriculture and even horticulture, exchange relations among settled and nomadic hunter-gatherers could become institutionalized by the development of locales for conducting exchange, by agreements over the relative value of objects exchange, and sometimes, by an explicit form of money. Such was the case for the Wintu and their neighbors in Northern California (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998) and the Chumash in Central California (especially Santa Barbara and its islands, where a currency was created consisting of bundles of unique indigenous shells specifying different values by the number of shells strung together).7 With this money, exchange occurred among small societies in the area around Sacramento, CA; and even more extensively, Chumash money was used around virtually all

7

See Gamble (2020).

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Southern California to the Arizona border as accepted “tender” and, in so being, dramatically accelerated and expanded trade across many small societies. What the Chumash and Wintu and neighbors did was in relatively recent times (in the case of the Chumash, use of money goes back to over 2000 years), but it is very likely that the movement of goods across longer reaches of territory hundreds of thousands of years ago involved the same dynamics around the beginnings of money and market exchanges. There is considerable evidence in many archeological studies of early humans that valued goods like salt and obsidian, along with furs and prestige goods like artistic artifacts and gem-like stones traveled not just hundreds but perhaps thousands of miles, probably through networks of markets passing these goods along across large spans of territory and perhaps using a simple form of money. Thus, geo-economic systems were well in place early in human inter-societal evolution.8 Was the same true for geo-political systems? Bronislaw Malinowski’s description of the Kula Ring in his Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) suggests that exchanges are not only economic but also symbolic and cultural, as well as political. In a several-hundred-mile circle of some eighteen islands, which included those of the Trobriand Islanders, the subjects of Malinowski's famous ethnography, two seemingly trivial objects rotated across a circle of islands among “Kula partners” in different populations. Red-shelled necklaces circulated in one direction around the circle of islands, and white-shelled bracelets circulated in the opposite directions. No one owned these items, which were considered very valuable with their possession bringing prestige to their holders. The objects had names, known to those in the Kula Ring, and those who possessed one of these objects were given prestige but were also obligated at some unspecified point in time to pass the object on to the next Kula partner in the Kula Ring. Malinowski wondered why individuals would risk the rough ocean seas to exchange objects in the several hundred-mile rings in order to pass on objects of no obvious extrinsic or monetary value. A great deal of speculation has occurred over this famous Kula Ring, but at the very least, these objects represent cultural obligations in a protracted territory and probably have worked to promote solidarities of populations that engage in economic exchanges and that could be potentially at war with each other in geo-political conflict. Thus, Kula Ring may be a manifestation of what we will analyze in Chap. 7: geo-cultural inter-societal dynamics. This circulation of these symbols of solidarity, and perhaps of political peace, in opposite directions, accompanied by much mythology, assured that all would know of the Ring and its obligations. It can be speculated that the Ring linked diverse populations in a system of mutual obligations that would reinforce more general economic exchanges while keeping at bay potential geo-political skirmishes among simple horticulturalists who generally are constantly in conflict.

8

For additional examples and extensive bibliography, see: Dogan and Michailido (2008).

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2.5.3

55

The Beginnings of Geo-Political Relations

There is a stronger basis for the exclusion of societies without a state from WSA, as argued by Wallerstein, because for most of history, human societies were hunter-gatherers without leaders and without unequal distributions of power. Yet, even with hunter-gatherers, leadership would emerge, although among nomadic hunter-gatherers such leadership was based on the respect and charisma of the leader rather than the consolidation of power. Settled hunter-gatherers often took leadership further in Big Man systems in which an individual and his allies consolidated power in the hands of the Big Man who, through his charisma and coalition, gained a degree of power for settled foraging bands, such as those in the northwest coast of North American as well as on island societies of the Pacific and Indian oceans. The consolidation of power was, nonetheless, resisted for a good part of the history of human societies by even more powerful norms against inequality, with those who sought to exercise power sanctioned heavily and, at times, killed for their efforts to wield power. Yet, there were probably times over the last 300,000 years that leadership with power evolved in the face of selection pressures on a population. There are many sources of such pressures, such as population growth, incursion of other populations in the territory, and ecological changes requiring new forms of productive activity such as fishing and even simple horticulture. Thus, they may well have been periodic movements of the population to concentrating power in leaders, and when these increased, power and inequalities could emerge. And, with power and inequality, the basic conditions for geo-political forms inter-societal relations would emerge. By the transition from late Pleistocene and to early Holocene, around 12,000 years ago and accelerating through the Holocene (11,000–5,000 BCE), chiefdoms built upon unilineal kinship systems and then polities revealing early forms of something looking like a bureaucratic organization around a leader had evolved, often only to collapse and de-evolve. Population growth, conflict with neighbors, and circumscription of territories (Spencer 1874; Carneiro 1970, 1978, 1981) generated selection pressures for more polities that would inevitably generate inequalities. And, once consolidated, the power can be the impetus of mobilization for conflict with other populations, even those with which they had once maintained stable geo-economic relations. Yet, this late arrival in a very small period in the history of human societies was not wholly new; elements of more stable polities and inequities within and between societies had, in all likelihood, emerged and faded away for at least 100,000, if not further in the past. Indeed, while exchange of resources tended to sustain inter-societal relations and, in most cases, work against political inequalities, such was surely not the case for all of human history. Despite powerful norms against inequality and use of power, these fundamental aspects of human societies probably periodically emerged, and perhaps faded away only to emerge again. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the consolidation of power and inequality has affected inter-societal dynamics for a long time and, therefore, is a good candidate for theorizing.

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2 Current Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics: Origins and Critiques

The Basis of Power

In response to selection pressures on a population, power becomes consolidated around four bases (Turner 1972, 1998, 2003; Abrutyn and Turner 2022). One base of power is coercion, or the mobilization of the capacity to physically impose decisions and directions on members of a population and, in the case of geo-politics, on the members of other societies and to punish physically those who have not followed directives of political leaders. Another base of power is administrative, or the organization of polity as a social structure to carry out directives of political leaders and to monitor the conformity of members of a population or a subordinate population in an inter-societal system. Still another basis of power is incentives, in which political leaders and the administrative body of a polity create a reward and punishment system for members of a society or inter-societal system to conform to the directive of political leaders. And a final basis of power is symbolic, whereby ideologies and beliefs, as well as totemic markers of these beliefs, are used to manipulate conformity to political policies. All of these are used by political leaders in societal and inter-societal systems. In the simplest polity in Big Man systems, much activity of the Big Man is to assure that members of his mini society conform to his policies and decision, many of which are often directed at highly ritualized and symbolic relations with the Big Man of neighboring bands, with the punishment imposed on those within a society who do not follow directives (e.g., providing resources to be exchanged with the Big Man of other societies). Incentives for conformity will include the redistribution by the Big Man of the resources that he has collected from members of his band and/or those from neighboring societies, with coercion being used if incentives do not work. And all Big Man directives are monitored by the allies acting as the administrative basis that supported the Big Man’s rise to power and actively operated as a potential coercive force when needed to assure that members of the population follow the directives of the Big Man. The symbolic basis of power is even more critical in Big Man politics because he “rules” by personal charisma and his ability to provide support for members of his population vis-à-vis neighboring populations. The bases of power increase as societies grow and consolidate more power in discrete leaders, moving to leadership by kin elders and then to chiefdoms organized by the unilineal descent system that organizes relations of authority at the lineage, sub-clan, clan, and moiety, which in turn serves at an administrative basis of power to implement and monitor the conformity of decisions by chiefs and councils of elders or paramount chief becomes (Abrutyn and Turner 2022). These kindred with authority at various levels of the kinship system can individually or with kin member support become the coercive force within a kin system or in inter-societal relations with other kinship systems. Symbolically, the ideology and rituals (and lore) of the kinship system operate as a symbolic base of power giving chiefs and paramount chiefs rights to impose

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decisions on kin members in communities and in systems of communities. Moreover, the ability of kin leaders to distribute or withhold resources also acts as an effective incentive base of power. By the end of the Pleistocene, these kin-based systems were morphing into something looking like state systems of power, although often punctuated with the remnants of the kin-based system of polity. The coercive base of power was increasing composed of members of military and eventually police units; the administrative base of power, except at the very top, was increasing non-kin-based; the incentive base of power was often franchised to local officials or military in locales in the inter-societal system between two or more agrarian societies. And the symbolic base of power could be from the ideologies and symbols of polity and often religion of the dominant society, as well as a mixing of ideologies and beliefs of the dominant and subordinate society. This reliance on symbols varied, depending upon the degree to which coercive and administrative bases of power were organized to regulate subordinate societies in an inter-societal system. What is true of agrarian inter-societal systems is also the case for all subsequent inter-societal systems, as each base of power became more bureaucratized. Moreover, the emerging inter-societal systems arising from power use were not just the geo-political dimension of these systems; they were also geo-economic systems in which the flow of money, the dynamism and reach of markets, the respective technologies of economic activity, the level and types of capital circulating in the economy, and other elaborations of new types of economic formations developed. Moreover, there could be cultural flows, with a geo-cultural system operating alongside geo-economic and political inter-societal systems. Indeed, until the last period with the rise of capitalism over the last 500 years, both geo-political and geo-economic systems have concomitantly emerged. While the geo-political side tended to dominate (with empire formations), the geo-economic side dominated at least with the rise of capitalism but, as is evident, geo-politics clearly has not disappeared, nor as geo-culture forces receded as is the case in Islamic societies and inter-societal systems. Indeed, it may be more likely that geo-politics will, contrary to Robinson’s and many others’ predictions, increase now and in the future Capitalism generates tensions among nations and blocks of nations that will have more effects on geo-economic and geo-cultural systems than has been recognized by WSA. Our theorizing does not privilege geo-economics as is often done in WSA; geo-politics is still very important and, in the future, may become a more potent force in the structure and operation of inter-societal systems, as will geo-cultural forces in other inter-societal systems. Moreover, there are other bases of inter-societal relations that are simply ignored by WSA. When ideology is taken out of the theorizing, predictions about the immediate and longer term present are more difficult but nonetheless possible, if the theory captures the generic forces driving geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural formations (see Chaps. 5, 6, and 7).

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Conclusion

It is not possible to document completely the thrust of our argument in two opening chapters. However, the goal of this book should be clear: to develop a general theory of inter-societal relations and systems by examining the dynamics of geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural formations during the entire course of human history. The models and principles should be able to explain the operation of simple and complex inter-societal systems because these systems are driven by the same fundamental forces. Nonetheless, these forces can vary enormously in their weight and values when comparing the first inter-societal systems among nomadic hunter-gatherers and settled foragers that dominated human societies for over 90% of societal history and the current inter-societal systems driven by capitalism (but also geo-politics among modern nation-states as well). While the models and propositions that we will offer are surely incomplete, they suggest a useful shift in how to analyze “world-systems.” In the next chapter, we will outline additional lines of thinking about the forces that drive inter-societal systems. We have chosen particular scholars and ideas because we think that their ideas can be used, and perhaps recombined, to produce a new kind of theory that, no doubt, will be incomplete but still more comprehensive than existing theories. Yet, as our critique of the work done over the last 50 years in WSA suggests, we think that a better theory of inter-societal dynamics can eventually be developed by drawing from the same data and conceptualizations that have emerged over these last 50 years. Thus, we are not throwing out the last 50 years of WSA but, rather, converting key insights into something more recognizable as formal theorizing. Still, whatever the merits of our efforts, they are still only a beginning; the theoretical arguments that we make will need further focus and perhaps supplementation. We are only suggesting that what we propose is a better way to proceed into the future, if indeed the goal is to develop scientific theories about the dynamics of human societal and inter-societal formations, now and throughout human history.

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. Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before European hegemony. The world system Ad 1250–1350. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alderson, Arthur S., and Roshan K. Pandian. 2018. What is really happening with global inequality? Sociology of Development 4 (3): 261–281. Amin, Samir. 1991. The ancient world-system versus the modern capitalist world-system. Review 14(3): 349–385. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The long twentieth century: money, power, and the origins of our times. London: Verso.

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Arrighi, Giovanni. 2001. Global capitalism and the persistence of the north-south divide. Science & Society 65 (4): 469–476. Arrighi, Giovanni. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: lineages of the twenty-first century. London: Verso. Babones, Salvatore J. 2015. What is world-systems analysis? Distinguishing theory from perspective. Thesis Eleven 127 (1): 3–20. Baran, Paul A. 1957. The political economy of growth. New York: Monthly Review. Blau, Peter. 1964. Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley. Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Boswell, Terry, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2000. The spiral of capitalism and socialism: toward global democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers. Boyer, Pascal. 2018. Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 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. Braudel, Fernand. 1977. Afterthoughts on material civilization and capitalism. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Brosnan, Sarah F., and Michael J. Beran. 2009. Trading behavior between conspecifics in chimpanzees, pan troglodytes. Journal of Comparative Psychology 123(2): 181–194. 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. 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. 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. Carson, John. 2017. Archaeology: stone age trade. Nature: Human Behavior 50. Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1989. Global formation: structures of the world-economy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Hall. 1997. Rise and demise, comparing world-systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Halls. 1993. Comparing world-systems: concepts and working hypotheses. Social Forces 71 (4): 851–886. 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. 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. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Hioko Inoue, Teresa Neal, and Evan Heimlich. 2015. The development of world-systems. Sociology of Development 1 (1): 149–172. Collins, Randall. 1990. Market dynamics as the engine of historical change. Sociological Theory 8 (2): 111–135. Cox, Oliver C. 1959. The foundations of capitalism. New York: Philosophical Library Inc. Incifer Banu Dogan and Michailidou Anna. 2008. “Trading in Prehistory and Protohistory: Perspectives from the Eastern Aegean and Beyond.“ pp. 17–53 in Charikleia PapageorgiadouBanis and Angeliki Giannikourē (eds.), Sailing in the Aegean, Readings on the Economy and Trade Routes. Athens: Maethmata. Emerson, Richard M. 1962. Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review 27(1): 31–41. Gilpin, Robert. 1987. The political economy of international relations. Princeton University Press. Firebaugh, Glenn. 2003. The new geography of global income inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Frank, Andre. 1966. The development of the underdevelopment. Monthly Review 8 (4): 17–31.

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Frank, Andre. 1967. Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre. 1969. Latin America: underdevelopment or revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1978. World accumulation, 1492–1789. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979a. Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979b. Mexican agriculture 1521-1630: transformation of the mode of production. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979c. Unequal accumulation: intermediate, semi-peripherical, sub-imperialist economies. Review 2(3). Frank, Andre Gunder, and Barry K. Gills, Eds. 1994. The world system: five hundred years or five thousand? New York: Routledge. Gamble, Lynn H. 2020. The origin and use of shell bead money in California. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 60: 101237. Hobson, John A. 1902. Imperialism: a study. Unwin Hyman. Hopkins, Terry, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1996. The age of transition: trajectory of the world-system, 1945–2025. New York: Zed Books. 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. Jevons, William Stanley. 1875. Money and the mechanism of exchange. D. Appleton & Company. 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). Kentor, Jeffrey. 2000. Capital and coercion: the role of economic and military power in the world-economy 1800–1990. New York: Routledge. 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. Meyer, John W. 2000. Globalization: sources and effects on national states and societies. International Sociology 15 (2): 233–248. Moore, Jason W. 2001. Capital, territory, and hegemony over the ‘Longue Duree.’ Science & Society 65 (4): 476–484. Mueller, Jason C., and Steven Schmitt. 2020. Revisiting culture and meaning-making in worldsystems analysis: a proposal for engaging with the cultural political economy approach. Critical Sociology 46 (4–5): 711–728. Prebisch, Raul. 1950. The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. New York: United Nations. Prebisch, Raul. 1959. Commercial policy in the underdeveloped countries. American Economic Review 49 (2): 251–273. 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. Robinson, William. 2001. Social theory and globalization: the rise of a transnational state. Theory and Society 30 (2): 157–200. Robinson, William. 2004. A theory of global capitalism: production, class and state in a transnational world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Robinson, William. 2008. Latin America and Global Capitalism: A Globalization Perspective. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

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Robinson, William. 2014. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, William, and Jerry Harris. 2000. Toward a global ruling class?: Globalization and the transnational capitalist class. Science and Society 64 (1): 11–54. Salomon, Erika, and Andrei Cimpian. 2014. The inherence heuristic as a source of essentialist thought. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40 (10): 1297–1313. Sanderson, Stephen K. 2012. Rethinking sociological theory: introduction and explaining a scientific theoretical sociology. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publisher. Singer, Has. 1950. The distribution of gains between investing and borrowing countries. American Economic Review 40: 473–485. Spencer, Herbert. 1874. The study of sociology. New York: D. Appleton. Struna, Jason. 2009. Toward a theory of the global proletarian fractions. Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 8 (2–3): 230–260. Turner, Jonathan H. 1972. Patterns of social organization: a survey of social institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1998. Some elementary principles of geo-politics and geo-economics. EuraAmerican: Journal of European and American Studies 28: 41–71. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2003. Human institutions: a theory of societal evolution. Boulder CO: Rowman and Littlefield. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010a. Theoretical principles of sociology, Volume 2 on microdynamics. New York: Springer. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010b. Theoretical principles of sociology, Volume 1 on microdynamics. New York: Springer. Turner, Jonathan H. 2017. Principles of inter-societal dynamics. Journal of World-Systems Research 23 (2): 649–677. Turner, Jonathan H. 2021. On human nature: the biology and sociology that made us human. New York and London: Routledge. Turner, Jonathan H., and Richard S. Machalek. 2018. The new evolutionary sociology: recent & revitalized theoretical and methodological approaches. New York: Routledge. 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. 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. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1980. The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and Consolidation of the European World Economy, 1600–1750. New York, NY: Academic Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1987. Historical systems as complex systems. European Journal of Operational Research 30 (2): 203–207. 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. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1990. Culture as an ideological battleground of the modern world-system. Theory, Culture, & Society 7 (2–3): 31–55. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1998. Uncertainty and creativity. American Behavioral Scientist 42 (3): 320–322. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2003. The decline of American power: the U.S. in a chaotic world. New York: The New Press. Woodburn, James. 2016. “Silent trade with outsiders: Hunter-gatherers’ perspectives.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6 (2): 473–496.

Chapter 3

Key Ideas for Building a Scientific Theory of Inter-Societal Dynamics

Scientific theories seek to explain the operative dynamics offundamental forces driving dimensions of the universe. Accordingly, a scientific theory of inter-societal dynamics begins with defining the dimension of the social universe to be explained. In our case, this is the nature of inter-societal systems and the forces driving their formation and disintegration. As we have emphasized in the previous chapter, inter-societal systems have existed since the beginning of human societies. These very small-scale systems were the first manifestations of what we are trying to explain with a general scientific theory. Over time, these simple formations elaborated periodically into more complex systems, but it was not until the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (12,000 to 11,000 years ago) that inter-societal systems grew dramatically in scale and dynamism. Nonetheless, we contend the same forces were operating in their earlier formation and their operative dynamics, albeit on dramatically different scales. In the previous chapter, we outlined several of the major approaches to World-Systems Analysis (WSA), emphasizing their strengths and weakness from our point of view. We will draw key insights from some of these but discard those elements that are less useful for our analysis. In this chapter, we will review additional conceptualizations of the fundamental dimensions and forces operating in inter-societal systems. We are thus isolating—in a somewhat ad hoc manner—what we believe to be the critical properties and processes of inter-societal systems that we can combine and assemble into a more general theory of inter-societal dynamics. We are, in essence, “picking and choosing” what we think will be useful ideas for combining into a more general theory that will be assembled into two types of theoretical formats. One format is highly abstract analytical models diagramming (as we have done in previous chapters) the direct, indirect, and feedback forces among the fundamental elements of inter-societal systems. The other format is inventories of abstract principles or propositions that can be tested individually or collectively by empirical researchers. The analytical models outline the direct, indirect, and reverse causal (feedback) forces among fundamental elements in ways that highlight the dynamics of inter-societal systems as they emerge, develop, and disintegrate. Such models © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_3

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permit observing the processes as a whole as they drive inter-societal systems. The second strategy of developing abstract principles and propositions suggests key relationships among the forces driving inter-societal systems that can provide hypotheses for empirical research and for further theorizing.

3.1 3.1.1

Two Early Theoretical Approaches Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer is a very misunderstood figure in the history of sociology, primarily because few today choose to read his voluminous works that outline a general theory of societal evolution, accompanied by an enormous amount of empirical data assembled and catalogued into 16 volumes of what he termed Descriptive Sociology, which included data on more developed societies and their histories as well as data on pre-literate societies. These data were all arrayed in a classification system that drew from Spencer’s more theoretical efforts to explain the evolution from small, relatively undifferentiated formations to large, complex industrial societies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In The Principles of Sociology (1874–96), Spencer argued that as populations grow, a society will begin to differentiate structures and their cultures along four basic axes of social organization: production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution. Production is social structures and their cultures engaged in gathering of resources and their conversion to products for consumption and use by members of the growing population; reproduction1 is (a) the structures for biologically reproducing individual members of a society and (b) the socio-cultural structures organizing the activities of individuals in societies; regulation is (a) the consolidation and eventually centralization of power for coordinating and controlling members of a population and (b) the development of cultural ideologies for controlling and regulating individuals and the structural units organizing their activities; and distribution is (a) the process of moving people, information, and commodities within and between societies and (b) the infrastructures, such as markets, roads, and ports, necessary for movement of commodities, people, and information within a society and across societies. Thus, the basic law in Spencer’s sociology is that as societies grow, they differentiate along the axes of production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution.2 Spencer often combined production and reproduction under the term “operative” but we have separated these two processes, or in reality, axes of differentiation in a growing society. 2 Indeed, in Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology, these were among the critical categories under which information about different types of societies—from hunter-gatherers through horticulture (and variants like fishing and herding societies) to agrarian and then industrial. The Principles of Sociology is three volumes (over 2000 pages) because it is filled with data to illustrate the abstract theoretical principles that he was developing in Descriptive Sociology which continued to be assembled after his death from money dedicated in his will to the larger project of assembling data of diverse types of human societies. 1

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Spencer often argued that much societal growth is an outcome of warfare between societies. The society with superior productive capacity can develop more goods and services, including weapons of war, and will have more dynamic distributive structures (e.g., markets and infrastructures) to distribute resources to members of a population. Moreover, a more productive society with enhanced distributive capacities will be able to consolidate power in polity and to develop cultural ideologies to organize a larger population, including larger armies, with the result that they are more likely win a war with smaller, less productive societies. While, at times, enemy societies are vanquished by winners of combat, more typically losing societies are subordinated into geo-political formation, revolving around any number of potential arrangements that blend victorious and defeated populations into a geo-political formation. The result is that a society or, more likely, inter-societal formation will increase the size of the population that needs to be organized, thus escalating the selection pressures from production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution for organizing the defeated and victorious populations into a larger socio-cultural formation revealing some degree of structural integration. And, if a stronger society continues to be engaged in warfare with other societies, these selection pressures increase and eventually may cause the disintegration of what had become, in Wallerstein’s perspective, a world empire. For Spencer, societies have always been perpetually in conflict, especially when they settled down into permanent locations and began to engage in horticulture and agriculture, and, of course, eventually industrial production of his time. Selection pressures on new inter-societal formations, whatever their origins, increase along a number of dimensions, including: (a) how to control the larger population, especially populations with different cultures (regulation); (b) how to produce sufficient resources to support the population (production), especially those members of the victorious population engaged in social control of the defeated populations (regulation); (c) how to distribute resources to members of the population and how to move personnel engaged in social control (distribution); and (d) how to create structures necessary to support larger, more diverse population (reproduction). These and other selection pressures all escalate over time as new populations are added to the geo-political formation. In essence, geo-political formations are under increasing logistical loads to elaborate and differentiate social structures along the four axes of production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution and to develop unifying ideologies and other cultural systems among the new, larger, and more differentiated social system. Eventually, these pressures become too great, especially when geo-political formation continues to expand its territory through conquest of other populations in even more distance from its home base and, thereby, sets off collapse of the geo-political formation back to its original home base or, alternatively, it is conquest by a more powerful expanding geo-political formation.

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From Spencer’s perspective, the evolutionary history of human societies has been driven by these dynamics, with population growth forcing the differentiation of new kinds of social structures and their cultures. And, in this way, Spencer argued, warfare had driven much societal evolution as war-making among populations generate selection pressures arising from production, reproduction, regulation, and distribution. For Spencer, these pressures eventually cause societies to develop new technologies for production; new mechanism for distribution to increase production for a much larger population (markets and money, plus infrastructures like roads for distribution of commodities, people, and information around larger territories); new structures and cultural symbols for organizing larger numbers now in larger, more differentiated structures (reproduction); and new, larger political formations, such as bureaucracies, military and police forces, taxation and other mechanisms for creating enough resources for political structures and for propagating ideologies legitimating patterns of domination in a society, all of which enhance the capacity for regulation. These evolutionary processes had been slow and episodic at first, but once populations began to grow and settle down into more permanent territories, they began to accelerate with horticulture, then accelerate more with agrarianism, and with industrialism, increase the scale and destructiveness of wars. Yet, Spencer argued that war has driven evolution that made for larger societies and had also driven innovations in societies that, potentially, could also provide resources for better lifestyles among members of their populations. Increasingly and by the time he had finished the three volumes of The Principles of Sociology in 1896, Spencer now viewed war and consolidation of power over populations in something like the British Empire as working against improvement in lifestyles of individuals in dependent colonies of the empire; and instead, he argued for inter-societal relations to be based on the power of markets and money to stimulate innovation and to provide for employment of people all over the world, thereby increasing the quality life for diverse populations. Accordingly, in the end just before his death in 1903, Spencer saw the expansion of capitalism, markets, financial instruments, and other innovations that came from capitalism as a “solution” to the perpetual conquest and domination that had been the driving forces of history and societal evolution. Yet, as also became evident, warfare was soon to dominate the whole of the twentieth century, even as the capitalist geo-economic system was evolving, even with the interruption of great depression. He would have hoped for, and perhaps would predicted the growth of the world capitalist system so evident now two decades into the twenty-first century, although he would have been somewhat dismayed by the persistence of geo-political formations. Indeed, the tensions now building in the second decade of this century among leading hegemons in this system— e.g., the United States, China, and Russia plus assorted states in the eastern Europe, Middle East, South Asia, and South America—suggest that geo-politics is very much in the future of the current system of societies and, moreover, will change, and perhaps even reduce the scale of the world capitalist system.

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Figure 3.1 presents an analytical model to show the causal processes in Spencer’s theory of geo-political formations. Analytical models like this one and others presented in the book will be an essential part of theoretical explanations of the social universe. These models delineate the flow of events across time, reading left to right. Generic properties and processes of the social universe are labeled in the boxes, with causal arrows flowing left to right to denote one period of passing time; the reversal arrows flowing right to left denote reverse causal effects that the initial flow of causal relations had on the elements labeled in the boxes. There are outcomes having what can be called, as noted above, as reverse causal effects (or, more colloquially, as feedback effects) on the forces that generated outcomes. All models in sociology must have these reversal causal loops because the social world is recursive, with outcomes feeding back as causal forces to change the values of the forces that produced these outcomes. The signs on the causal arrows going left to right, and then right to left as reverse causal effects, indicate whether or not the effect is (1) positive (+) and increases the values of elements of the model labeled inside the boxes, (2) negative (−), (3) lagged positive (=/+) where there is not an immediate effect but, over time, eventually a positive effect is evident, (4) curvilinear effect of being initially negative but then turning positive (−/+). There are other possible signs, which will become evident in other models that we present, but these are the range of outcomes postulated in Herbert Spencer’s theory. Elements of Spencer’s model will inform a general theory of inter-societal dynamics theorizing in later chapters.3 Turning to the dynamics of the model in Fig. 3.1, population growth generates logistical loads on how the larger number of individuals and families are to become organized. Spencer implied a kind of natural selection argument in emphasizing that such loads from population growth generate selection pressures on the four fundamental forces driving social organization outlined above, that is, level of regulation (and in this model of the degree of consolidated power in polity), level of production (in economy), and level of distribution (markets and infrastructures), and implied reproduction (of people and social structures and their cultures organizing people’s activities). Changes in the values of the variables in the model, the reverse causal effects will feed back and alter the values of each element in the model. Once selection pressures push for the consolidation, and the centralization of power (evident by the positively signed arrows from level of logistical loads and level of selection pressures), the leaders in a polity will push for increased production and distribution, which works to generate a higher level of material surplus (as is evident by the positive signs among regulation, production, material surplus, and distribution). However, Spencer emphasized that this set of causal forces also increases the level of inequality and stratification in a society which, in turn, increases internal

3

Sociology has largely avoided incorporating Spencer’s theorizing into new perspectives because of the undeserved prejudices against him by scholars who have not read his works.

+

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Fig. 3.1 Spencer’s implicit model of the dynamics of geo-political formations

Hostile societies near bordersof geo-political formation

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threats based on conflict between super-ordinates and subordinates.4 For Spencer, these are the fundamental forces driving societal evolution along the axes of production, regulation, and distribution (with reproduction being left somewhat implicit). Spencer argued that as these forces operate to increase the size and level of differentiation of a society, which in turn increases inequality via the reverse causal arrows, and such is especially the case when a societal formation grows via warfare and conquest of other populations, thereby creating a geo-political formation, which accelerates the processes outlined in the model. The bottom portion of the model in Fig. 3.1 outlines Spencer’s views on the processes leading polity to engage in warfare and to create a geo-political inter-societal system. One key force is the presence of hostile societies, and even if not initially hostile, he saw circumscription of societies (that is, societies close to together and limiting the capacity to expand) as a force driving warfare. Potential hostility, or often just circumscription, generates a sense of threat that in turn increases selection pressures that lead a polity to concentrate power, especially its coercive and administrative bases of power (see pp. 128 and 127 for definitions), that is used to produce weapons and other resources needed in defense or needed in moving out to engage neighboring societies in warfare. If the polity has mobilized a sufficient number of forces and armaments and other products needed to conduct war relative to neighboring societies, it will have success in war and, in varying way, seek to control the territory and the population of those societies that it conquers. The bold-face reverse causal arrows indicate that once this process is initiated, more coercive power causes further mobilization as will production of war-making equipment and armaments, because of the threat that previously hostile populations will now have as members of a conquered society that is now governed by the polity of another society. Moreover, mobilizing for warfare and for maintaining control over conquered territories increase internal inequality and stratification among the members of conquered society, and as members of conquered populations are added into the mix, they pose a threat to the dominant polity that, in turn, forces polity to mobilize resources of social control. Coercive control and/or tight administrative monitoring of the original population and the conquered population now making up a geo-political formation increases inequalities throughout this formation, which generates selection pressures to further concentration of power. As the reverse causal effects of each increase in social control will push polities to escalate the level of the coercive-administrative power, thereby escalating resentments from such tight control and from increased inequality. And, if these cycles lead a society to engage in further warfare, thereby increasing the size of the geo-political formation and the population to be controlled, then polity is under increased pressure

4

As indicated by the positive sign between level of inequality, concentration of power, and material surplus, although there is a lagged effect from material surplus, which over time as material surplus increases, generates increasing inequality and stratification among members of a population.

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to keep engaging in warfare with societies, and thereby forcing further escalation of the forces outlined in the model. Eventually, Spencer emphasizes societies generating larger formations over-reach and are not able to sustain control, which leads to geo-political formations disintegrating and retracting back to its original boundaries. Moreover, an expanding geo-political formation will potentially find itself confronting another advancing geo-political formation, leading to what Randall Collins terms a “show down” war that can destroy one of these contending geo-political formations. Spencer realized that the mode of social control exercised can mitigate against the disintegrative effects of geo-political domination. For example, if a more co-optive strategy is pursued, such as extracting tribute but leaving intact existing institutional systems to operate as they previously did, then the logistical loads are not likely to escalate. Yet, this strategy can also allow for covert counter-mobilization unless the conquering society maintains a large coercive force in conquered territories that can, if needed, crush such mobilization by the conquered population. Sustaining large armies is costly and, in the long run, will generate tensions that force a conquering polity to expend even more resources in social control. We outline Spencer’s analysis of militant and industrial societies in Fig. 3.2. The circular movement was also seen by such early sociologists as Vilfredo Pareto, but Spencer’s approach is the most compatible with the analysis of inter-societal systems. By militant, Spencer did not so much mean “military” action, per se, but rather tight and highly centralized coercive and administrative control of a population by polity, and by industrial, Spencer did not literally mean “industrial economies” but, rather, societies which are less governed and where relations among individuals and the corporate units organizing their activities are less tightly regulated, thereby giving individuals and corporate units the freedom to form diverse types of relations without undo control by polity. Spencer felt that societies at all stages of evolution, from horticulture to industrial societies of his time, tended to move cyclically in this manner. And he implied that inter-societal systems were a particularly strong case for this cycle because when a dominating polity in an empire uses coercive and administrative control, resentments build to the point of forcing polity to release this tight control, but conversely, in inter-societal systems that are “industrial”—with looser control— pressures will build for the dominant society to exercise tighter control when dominated populations become restive. Thus, there is this fundamental dialectic in societies and, by implication, inter-societal systems in which loosely integrated by centers of power generate conditions promoting greater social control by polity, whereas when control by polity is excessive by the use of coercive and administrative bases of power, actors in such systems will engage in resistance and often force hegemonic power into reducing coercion. The effects of expanding geo-political formations led Spencer near the end of his life to recognize that, on the one hand, the scale of societies had grown, forcing innovations, increased production, increased distribution via markets and infrastructures, increased material wealth (but also tension-producing inequalities), which

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Problems of societal integration

Pressures for consolidation and regulation of diverse units

Differentiation/ diversification of social units

Decentralization of power and authority (industrial)

Centralization of power and authority (militant)

High levels of regulation of productive, reproductive, and distributive processes

Pressures for deregulation

Problems of stagnation and resentment by virtue of over-regulation

Fig. 3.2 Spencer's conception of cycle phases of political centralization and decentralization

generally allowed human societies to prosper. However, he also recognized that evolution driven by war and coercive control within any given society and among any inter-societal system generates intense disintegrative pressures, and hence societal and inter-societal instabilities that can lead to de-evolution—a view that he held for most of his life. Based on this perspective, Spencer began to realize that the British Empire was a mistake, and increasingly, he advocated for geo-political formations be converted to purely geo-economic formations in which markets rather than armies and colonial

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administrators affect the distribution of resources across societies. Of course, he did not fully understand that, as most of WSA has emphasized (perhaps overemphasized), control of markets in a geo-economic inter-societal system can be just as coercive and corrosive as a military occupation. Still, Spencer was well ahead of any theorist in the 1870s in his analysis of societal and inter-societal systems.

3.1.2

Ibin Khaldun

It may seem strange to introduce ideas from a fourteenth-century thinker, especially since his works are rarely read by sociologist today. Yet, his Introduction to History (1377) represents one of the earliest analyses of inter-societal relations from what would become four to five centuries later a standard approach to the sociological analysis of human societies and inter-societal relations. His ideas have been brought, once again, into sociology by a population ecologist turned historian and sociologist, Peter Turchin (2006), whose approach incorporates the fundamental insights of Ibin Khaldun. Khaldun developed a theory to explain the cyclical dynamics of among Medieval populations in the Middle East that are generalizable to many other populations. His theory emphasized that solidarities built around ethnicity and other shared cultural characteristics among members of a society are a key force in warfare, with the level of solidarity among members of a population generally increasing the likelihood of victory in inter-population conflict. This concept, which he termed asabiya, was defined as a shared solidarity and confidence among members of groups to realize their goals. Khaldun focused on two distinctive ethnic populations—the Berbers and the Arabs—who occupied different niches in societies of the Middle East and, therefore, were organized very differently. He stressed that the Berbers were a combination of nomads in the desert, coupled with more sedentary subpopulations, whereas the Arabs were urban and “civilized” by comparison. The populations of each varied in their respective numbers, with the Arab population being much larger than the Berbers, as well as more politically organized into states and even empires, compared to the smaller scale and less politically developed organizations of the Berbers. The Berbers lived more on the edge of Arab territories in much smaller communities and, in the case of the nomadic portions of the Berbers, in temporary communities and encampments. This is probably the first analysis of what has become a constant finding and theme in WSA empirical analysis: the ability of peripheral and even more likely, semi-peripheral societies to displace or conquer what had been the dominant society in a previous system of societies. These findings emphasize several critical points. Evolutionary analysis of societies, and particularly systems of societies, is often cyclical, with phases within these societies whereby developed societies decline and lose dominance (economic, political, and cultural) vis-à-vis other societies in their environment and are eventually replaced by more dynamic (economically) and powerful (militarily) society.

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Second, warfare is often the force behind displacement, as smaller and less complex societies can mobilize military force, often using new military technologies, and deploying armies with much higher solidarity than larger, more complex, but declining societies. Third, success in war is, therefore, often related to institutional rigidities and degeneration arising from population growth, political corruption, and even economic decline of core societies—thus making dominant societies vulnerable to military force from the periphery. A recent analysis by Turchin and colleagues (2021) found that the historical rise of “war machines” in medieval Europe and Asia was related to advances in iron metallurgy and horse riding, as central drivers of military technological evolution. Other factors that seemingly might be important—e.g., size of population organized by a state, territorial size, or sophistication of governance—did not play a role in the development of new military technologies. Khaldun draws a similar conclusion in his analysis, and, indeed, the historical data are biased by the fact that the war machine of the Mongols and other riders from the steppes of Central Asia swept over the Middle East and Eastern Europe with not only more solidarity in their organization but also new technologies of warfare that allowed smaller populations to create the biggest empire ever formed on earth, extending well beyond the six million square miles of all other world-level empires (Collins 1998). Peripheral populations with high solidarity, riding on fast horses in mass, employing new types of metal swords, and having little reluctance to killing and pillaging adversaries were a new type of warfare that, for a time, dominated world history. Peter Turchin has thus carried forth Khaldun’s project centuries later and, thereby, has been an important force in re-orienting analysis of inter-societal systems.

3.2 3.2.1

Contemporary Theoretical Approaches Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin is an ecologist who has turned to history and sociology to explain the rise and fall of empires through warfare and, thereby, brought geo-politics back to the center of analysis on inter-societal systems. His work is more recent than others examined in this chapter, but it brings the insights from Khaldun to the present, and so we are placing this analysis here following our summary of Khaldun’s key ideas. Turchin’s (2003, 2006, 2013, 2016)5 early ideas recognized the importance of ecology in inter-societal dynamics. In particular, the demographic component of populations in a given environment is critical, especially the carrying capacity of the environment relative to the size and modes of organization of a population. The

5

See also Turchin and Hall (2003); Turchin and Nefadov (2009); Turchin et al. (2013); Turchin et al. (2018); Turchin et al. (2021).

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Stagnation phase (compression)

Crisis phase (state breakdown)

Integrative Phase

Disintegrative Phase

Depression (intercycle)

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From previous downward phase

To next upswing

Historical Time

Fig. 3.3 Secular cycles of societies and inter-societal systems

carrying capacity of the environment is determined by (a) “physiographic features” (e.g., availability of land, water resources, soil characteristics, etc.) for agricultural production, (b) length of growing season, (c) long-term changes in climate, and (d) level of agricultural technology and its deployment. As population density approaches the carrying capacity of the environment, shortages in land and food, coupled with oversupplies of agricultural labor, lead to a decline in per-capita consumption, particularly among the poor segments of a society.6 Moreover, as the carrying capacity is reached or exceeded, the resulting economic stress leads to lower rates of reproduction of members in the population and higher rates of mortality because of undernourishment, disease, and epidemics on vulnerable populations. Birth rates can appear to reach an equilibrium between birth and death rates, but in fact this is rarely the case because new economic forces are likely to be unleashed, thus disrupting the apparent equilibrium. Indeed, when population growth exceeds the productive capacity of the economy, the economic component will begin to have further consequences for the demographic component. When the economy can no longer provide resources for the whole population, changes occur in the distribution of the populations and the social structures 6

Turchin borrows ideas from Goldstone’s (1991) Revolution and Rebellion in Early Modern Europe, and then applies them to inter-societal analysis, as we will be doing in the coming chapters. Goldstone’s key ideas and model on them are examined later in this chapter in Table 3.2.

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organizing their activities. These include higher rents and prices for land, thereby creating high profits and wealth for elites. At the same time, releasing peasants from manorial estates leads to their migration to urban areas where they must work for lower wages in craft industries that, in turn, expand and differentiate leading to urban growth and, at times, prosperity. These changes encourage the increased manufacturing of goods and conspicuous consumption by elites, which, in turn, expands regional and international trade (and perhaps geo-economic systems). Yet, as the income and consumption of peasants and elites increases, tension increases because of rising economic stratification between peasants and elites (and owners of production) diverge even further. Coupled with periodic crop failures and the resulting hardship on peasants leads to poor health that encourages epidemics. Eventually, this economic misery leads to peasant revolts and urban uprisings which, if the state and its wealthy patrons are strong, are usually repressed. For example, in Turchin and Nefadov’s (2009) Secular Cycles, there occurs a “golden age” for elites under conditions causing misery for non-elites, but if incomes for elites remain high, they will generally support a strong state apparatus to protect their interests, even with rising tensions with poorer segments of the population. This “golden age” cannot endure, however, because as elite’s numbers grow, particularly as the state bestows elite status on those who can provide loans and other financial benefits to sustain its operations. Yet, eventually elite’s support for the state will decline, the capacity of the state to control non-elites will also decline, which, in turn, will generate a legitimation crisis for the now ineffective state. At this point, the state can find itself facing restive elites whose patronage has failed to sustain the state and/or the wealth of elites, coupled with internal revolts by the less elite against the weakened state. This weakening of the state can also encourage other societies to mobilize for conquest of the floundering society. Thus, geo-politics are often the result of perceived opportunities to engage in military action against weakened states—just as Khaldun saw over 500 years ago. However, there are additional forces that can work against this fate: (a) the state is able to secure sufficient resources before its vulnerability is revealed and recruit a coercive force to discourage invasion by another society; (b) the rate of competition among elites to gain favor from the state is sufficiently high to keep the state strong; (c) the number of other hostile relations among societies in the environment distracts them from marching on the state; (d) the spread of pandemic reduces the size of a population; and (e) the drop in population size of a population creates income opportunities for survivors of epidemics that reduce tension with the state. Figure 3.3 outlines what Turchin and Neadov (2009) term “secular cycles.” There is an integrative slope that increases population growth, economic productivity, relative prosperity among classes, and expansion of the state. There are also sub-cycles in the upward part of the cycle and in the downward phases in Fig. 3.3 that are denoted by the dashed lines. A secular cycle begins with the expansion phase, followed by a stagnation phase that eventually turns the cycle downward. The second phase of the upward cycle runs on inertia and then eventually reaches an “integrative peak.” This peak is typified by low levels of political instability,

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abundant free land (but declining), low grain prices, increased cultivation, high land-to-peasant ratio (but declining), high real wages, low rents, high personal consumption, low levels of usury, high grain reserves, rural settlement growth, low levels of urbanization, few artisans and craft workers, reliance trading networks, low levels of economic inequality, taxes increasing, positive and optimistic ideology, and low levels of state intervention in the economy (as of these would correspond to Spencer’s portrayal of “industrial” societies in Fig. 3.2 or Khaldun’s portrayal of Berbers in his analysis). However, very much like what now occurs today in capitalist societies, this upward phase sets the conditions for stagflation and other “compressing” events as the population grows and the carrying capacity of the environment is approached. Still, it is a “golden era” for elites, at least for a time, as high rents and prices create wealth and bring more families up in the stratification system. But these trends will eventually increase competition for resources and launch a downward phase. This phase is typified by declining strength of state, political instability, stagnation, and population decline in rural settlements, rural immiseration, declining grain reserves, growth in urban regions, increasing rents, low-cost labor, and increase in craft industries. Elites enjoy affluence for a time and engage in conspicuous consumption, but as inequalities increase, less optimistic ideologies emerge among the less affluent. State revenues decline, with the state in desperation often initiating social reforms, infrastructural development, colonization of borderlands, and even warfare to expand to new territories, and these work for a time in blinding many to the realities of decline, but all of these state initiatives are costly, especially the costs of military occupation into new territories. As stagflation phase comes close, the downward slide or disintegrative phase kicks in and a new “crisis” phase emerges which comes close to what Jack Goldstone (1991) described as “state breakdown,” but it is a state breakdown of a society that has created a geo-political system that the state can no longer sustain. The state breakdown phase leads into depression phase. The population is down from its peak; the number of elites has declined because of civil war, and perhaps conquest by another society, which only accelerates downward mobility of former elites. Political stability remains high if no external power has created a geo-political formation, but the society remains susceptible to conquest. Trade with other societies becomes difficult, especially along longer trade routes. Arts and crafts decline, and while urban areas are still large, their size is declining but rural settlements do not increase, even as the land-to-peasant ratio increases, because cultivation of the land in general has declined. Inequalities remain high, thereby sustaining the political instability. The danger from epidemics remains high but declining. Land rents remain low, as do grain prices, with grain reserves and personal consumption being highly variable (and depend upon the degree of political stability). At the end of this downward phase, the probability of invasion by another polity increases significantly, especially by a polity on the margins of a declining society. At some point, whether from rebuilding after revolts and reform, but more likely from conquest by another society, the integrative size of the curve will begin anew.

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The time frames for this renewal vary enormously. For example, while a secular cycle took several hundred years during the agrarian era of Europe, secular cycles in the contemporary world have been accelerating. In his book, Ultrasociety (2016), Turchin seeks to explain the evolution of societal complexity through the agrarian age up to the beginning of the era that would lead to capitalism and industrialism. Turchin argues against the more standard “bottom-up” scenario of how this movement to ultra-societies occurred. The standard portrayal goes some like this: In response to warming climates some 12,000 years ago, population growth set into motion migrations to new territories, which in turn, led to the filling up of the Near East. By 10,000 years ago, formerly nomadic and foraging populations began the domestication of plans and animals, leading to new levels of productive outputs that would allow for further population growth, larger settlements into cities, and hence the beginnings of the evolution of “civilization.”

Turchin’s alternative portrayal emphasizes that population growth within bounded territories would most likely set into motion conflict among neighboring societies. Such conflict would lead to extinction of weaker groups or their inclusion in a new, larger inter-societal formation that might evolve into a larger society. Following both Herbert Spencer and Iban Khaldun, larger and better organized societies will generally win wars, and so over time these societies would incorporate or form alliances, and in so doing, they would scale up their coercive base of power. The shift from foraging to agriculture began slowly, probably in response to potential or real conflict with neighboring populations—perhaps from Big Men in settled hunter-gatherers to kinship leaders in horticulture and then to simple agriculture and eventually advanced agriculture. In so doing, these growing societies would create new social structures and institutional systems regulated, eventually, by a state-based polity. Such state-based polities would push for property rights and techniques for domesticating animals, and there would be a consolidation of polity and religion, which was also evolving to a more monotheistic basis, with political leaders being part of a religious hierarchy. This process of consolidating power in a secular hierarchy condoned by religion increased the legitimacy of a polity in organizing larger coercive forces. Thus, the evolution of marcher states and the development of geo-political formations were protracted, as conflict among populations gradually led to the evolution of polity and then state polities that could mobilize large armies in conflict with other societies (Abrutyn and Turner 2022). Turchin introduces the simple idea that the fatalities of a small army compared to larger army represent a larger portion of the smaller army’s members, and over time, the smaller army will simply run out of soldiers to fight compared to the larger army. Similar to Spencer, Turchin argues that this simple formula explains why larger (and better organized) armies generally win wars, which ultimately leads to larger societies as they incorporate conquered populations into their institutional systems. Thus, leaders engaged in geo-political activities constantly had to increase the size of their coercive forces, holding technologies constant, if they were to win wars, and thus, not only did the size of societies increase, so did the polity. Yet,

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more despotic polities in larger societies, in which ever-larger coercive forces are needed, will also generate inequalities that in the long run create internal tension that can lead to revolutionary conflict along with fiscal problems of sustaining large armies often far from their home base. Turchin also recognizes that military technology is important, and in his empirical work, he concludes that military technology is not always related to size of population and polity (Turchin et al. 2021). Indeed, a long running theme in his work is the historical analysis of how small, more mobile populations on the steppe of larger agricultural societies with centralized polities are uniquely poised to become warriors because they must protect their herds and, hence, engage in military training to do so (Turchin 2016: 154). As described by Khadun and as outlined in Fig. 3.3, flatland polities in decline are vulnerable to conquest by higher solidarity populations invading from the margins or periphery who have formed alliances with others, particularly when they could be more mobile because of their capacity to use horses and, moreover, to deploy superior iron weapons to their soldiers. Often in response, larger settled populations build up their armies and develop projectile weapons to counteract the mobility of invaders from the periphery. Whatever the result of the conflict, both sides have scaled up their armies, consolidated power, and often formed alliances that enlarge their populations and hence the scale of societies. In all cases, warfare involving centralized leadership increased inequalities which created vulnerabilities to internal revolt, thus making the society and any geo-political system unstable. Turchin argues that the Axial Age dramatically changed the nature of leadership and its legitimation by invoking the powers of supernatural forces to legitimate polity. In the Mediterranean, Near East, India, and China, political leaders were beginning to present themselves as “good” rather than as all powerful and punitive, and they were articulating ideologies emphasizing the common welfare and incorporating religion into legitimating polity because the nature of religion had also begun to change. Monotheism in the Middle East, i.e., Islam and Christianity—evolving from Zoroastrianism and Judaism—were rapidly spreading in the Middle East and eventually Europe, as was Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism as they diffused across large territorial expanses in Asia. All were spreading a more egalitarian ethic in which anyone could belong to a religion. The explanation for these changes is typical of Turchin’s work, emphasizing a new kind of military technology that originated in the Great Eurasian Steppe around 1000 BCE. Eurasian pastoralist in Kazakhstan learned how to harness horses to chariots, an innovation that spread rapidly to Northern China, India, and Europe. A thousand years later after creating the bridle, saddle, and stirrups for riding horses and then combining these with iron and steel weapons, as Khaldun had noted, the dominance of steppe horsemen over Asia, parts of Europe, and even China would last for over 2,000 years as territories were lost to the comparative small populations of Great Eurasian Steppe populations. Using horses as cavalry, soldiers from the steppes could strike rapidly and in mass in ways that made it difficult for ground forces of agrarian societies to defend all their territories.

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The result of this vulnerability was for the size of states and their populations to increase so that they could build up even larger armies housed in fortresses across all their territories, often accompanied by barriers—the most spectacular case being the Great Wall of China. In this way, these nomadic warriors could be kept at bay. The result of this response to new military technologies was to increase the size and complexity of societies, with a larger polity with a more efficient taxation system to support larger armies which, in turn, made these societies threats to each. Thus, once warfare was driving societal evolution through the creation of geo-political formations, ultra-sociality increased as geo-political formations expanded. And as political leaders used “commoners” in their armies to take and control territories, and then to defend them, these leaders increasingly recognized the need to treat members of their armies better if they were to retain power. The better treatment of commoners, coupled with the softening of Axial Age religions, allowed for the increasing scale of social cooperation to larger societies in which (1) constraints on elites to be less despotic now existed; (2) religion emphasizing universalism, rather than ethnic particularism, integrated larger numbers of individuals; and (3) religions with “Big Gods” that moralized social life and monitored conformity to morals gave gods the power to know what people are thinking and whether or not people are virtuous, and who is bad and should be punished (Turchin et al. 2021). These changes in religion dramatically increased social control, especially if political leaders were viewed (or pretended to be) also under the control of the gods. Warfare thus generated selection pressures for larger societies, big armies, more complex socio-cultural formations, and larger polities led by more benign leaders and all-seeing Big Gods. So, much like Spencer had argued, warfare had become very much the engine of societal growth and, hence, what must come after growth: regulation and integration by the consolidation and centralization of the four bases of power as well as moralizing ideologies (initially by religions and later by secular ideologies belief systems).

3.2.2

Christopher Chase-Dunn and Colleagues

The work of Christopher Chase-Dunn and colleagues extended the original formulation of WSA in three important ways. First, their work re-conceptualized the core, semi-periphery, and periphery of the world economy as a continuum rather than discrete types of societies destined to certain “roles” in the world-system (Chase-Dunn 1989). Based on this re-conceptualization, societies in the capitalist world economy contain a mixture of core and peripheral activities and the ratio of these activities defines their status and role in the hierarchal international division of labor. Second, as was outlined in the last chapter, Chase-Dunn and his colleagues developed a framework for conceptualizing and analyzing pre-modern world-systems, which permitted the comparison of world-systems across time and challenged Wallerstein’s argument that early pre-modern societies were not integrated in a world-system (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993, 1997; Chase-Dunn and

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Manning 2002; Chase-Dunn and Anderson 2005; Inoue et al. 2012; Inoue et al. 2015). Additionally, this comparative framework was a significant advancement in WSA because it utilized a set of generalized concepts and principles for understanding world-systems and their dynamics. And third, Chase-Dunn and colleagues reformulated the analytical model of world-systems as overlapping networks of exchange (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993). This network perspective of world-systems highlighted the relational nature inter-societal systems and distilled WSA into a theory of inter-societal exchange. Overall, these contributions were important for advancing WSA and theories of inter-societal systems and dynamics through creating a conceptual toolkit to create explanatory models of inter-societal dynamics and the evolution of world-systems over a more protracted time frame than WSA allows (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014). Chase-Dunn (1989) initially expanded the conceptualization of core, semi-periphery, and periphery in the modern world-system by arguing these analytical categories are defined by the nature of economic production, with economies defined by constellations of core and peripheral economic activities. Here, core economic activity refers to capital-intensive production utilizing skilled, high-wage labor and peripheral economic activity refers to labor-intensive production utilizing unskilled, low-wage labor which is subjected to extra-economic coercion. According to Chase-Dunn, societies in the capitalist world economy can be placed along a continuum of production with core production at one end of the scale and peripheral production at the other end of the scale. Core societies are defined by a high ratio of core to peripheral economic activity, while peripheral societies are defined by a low ratio of core to peripheral economic activity. Semi-peripheral societies contain a near-equal mixture of core and peripheral activity. This composition of core and peripheral economic activity is partially determined by processes of state formation, nation-building, and geo-politics. Strong states in the core can promote the monopolization of leading manufacturing industries in the world economy. However, the economic rent from these monopolies is subject to long-run competition as the political conditions maintaining these monopolies are subject to economic and geo-political competition from other core states or highly mobile semi-peripheral states. In contrast, weak states in the periphery are unable to facilitate this kind of monopolization in leading industries that ensures these economies are subject to intensive competition with other peripheral economies and that firms in these economies will be unable to generate high profits. As a result, peripheral economies continue to specialize in labor-intensive production in highly competitive sectors, whereas core economies specialize in capital-intensive production in monopolized sectors. Most importantly, this re-conceptualization of core, semi-periphery, and periphery places economies on a continuum rather than in distinct positions. In Wallerstein’s formulation of WSA, countries are organized into hierarchical networks of commodity and capital exchange, and these exchanges are characterized as exploitative. Chase-Dunn’s reformulation broadens the conceptual space for understanding the organization of world-systems especially for pre-modern world-systems. Specifically, this re-conceptualization of core/periphery makes a

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distinction between core-periphery differentiation and core-periphery hierarchy (Chase-Dunn et al. 2015). Core/periphery differentiation refers to differences in population density, polity size, and internal hierarchy between interacting societies. For example, interaction between a society of village dwellers and a society of nomads in early world-systems is core/periphery differentiation. Core/periphery hierarchy refers to the exploitive relationships between societies and the domination of societies. This classification of world-system organization departs from Wallerstein’s original formulation that assumes all world-systems are organized as hierarchies between societies. Moreover, this conceptualization creates a distinction between the internal economic and political organization of societies and the relations and exchanges between societies in world-systems. The most important contribution of Chase-Dunn and colleagues is the development of a comparative framework for theorizing pre-modern world-systems and the modern world-system. This framework is essential for explaining the evolution of world-systems that are not reliant on the origins of capitalism. This framework synthesized by earlier work in WSA (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989; Frank and Gills 1994; Amin 1991) to explain world-systems among pre-capitalist societies. For example, Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony (1989) identifies the thirteenth-century roots of the modern world-system with the integration of societies in Europe, the Middle East, and China into an interdependent system of trade. Frank and Gills’ The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? (1994) directly challenges the “periodization” of the modern world-system by extending Abu-Lughod’s perspective and contending that the contemporary world-system has been evolving since 3000 B.C.E. with the political, economic, and social interactions between Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies. And Amin (1991) departs from traditional WSA by identifying the emergence of another world-system among Hellenistic, Indian, and Chinese societies from 500 to 300 B.C.E. Chase-Dunn and Lerro (2014) ambitiously recognize the earliest emergence of inter-societal systems as far back as the Paleolithic, noting that some stone tools appear to have originated over 70 miles from where they were eventually discovered by archaeologists. This comparative framework for WSA allows for theorizing the evolution of world-systems independently of the development of capitalism by emphasizing, as we will, the importance of market dynamics as the key to the viability of these pre-capitalist systems, which we take further to the very beginnings of human societies. A key component of this comparative framework is the redefinition of world-systems. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1993: 855) redefine world-systems as “inter-societal networks in which interactions are important for the reproduction of internal structures of the composite units and importantly affect changes that occur in these local structures.” Based on this generalized definition, Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) view world-systems as “nested networks of interactions” defined by the exchange information, goods, alliances, and warfare between societies. Specifically, Chase-Dunn and colleagues contend world-systems emerge from sustained interaction between societies within the four types of nested networks: (1) information networks (INs), (2) prestige good networks (PGNs), (3) bulk good networks

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(BGNs), and (4) political-military networks (PMNs). Each of these networks varies in spatial scale and intensity, and it is likely that the first three were ubiquitous even among settled hunter-gatherers. And perhaps political networks in a simple geo-political formation also emerged among early human societies. INs refer to the exchange of information between societies and this kind of exchange exhibits the largest geographic scale since information can extensively travel and requires minimal input. PGNs refer to the exchange of small and highly valued luxuries of material and symbolic importance. Given the low weight and size of prestige goods, this type of exchange can span large geographic scales. PMNs refer to the formation of alliances or conduct of warfare between societies that is limited in geographic scale given the logistical requirements of mobilizing armies, diplomats, and other administrative units. The smallest, but most intensive networks involve the exchange of BGNs or bulk goods. Generally, these networks are formed through a division of labor in the production of necessities such as food and raw materials. Given the size and weight of these goods, the ability to exchange them over long distances is limited by the logistical capacity of societies and their infrastructures. This network model of world-systems is important for extending theories of inter-societal dynamics and systems especially for generating fundamental principles of inter-societal dynamics and system properties. Both pre-modern and modern world-systems can be characterized by the inter-societal exchange of information, political-military action, prestige goods, and bulk goods. A Case Study of Pre-modern World-Systems. This last point was well documented in Chase-Dunn and Mann’s (1998) analysis of a pre-literate society in The Wintu and Their Neighbors, outlining as the subtitle emphasizes “a very small world-system in Northern California.” As we have emphasized in Chap. 2, Chase-Dunn and Mann examined the Wintu to illustrate that settled hunter-gathers, even those without a Big Man or leader with actual power, can develop inter-societal relations, thereby making the case that many of the dynamics of inter-societal systems existed long before the Holocene and, thereby, before the current modern world. The coded data had been collected on the Wintu before the California gold rush because this historical event significantly disrupted the structure of the indigenous peoples in the area. The Wintu and their neighbors, which included populations speaking several different languages, were embedded in long-distance trade networks defined by exchange between linguistically diverse populations. Each population consisted of a village of several hundred people (although some were as small as 20 or 30 people), with relatively high density compared to nomadic hunter-gatherers. The territorial sizes and density varied among the Wintu and their neighbors (designated as the Nomlaki, Yanna and Yahi, Achomawi and Atsegewi, Shasta, Okwanchu, and Chimariko), with the Wintu being the largest population of 5300 (and with the named populations above listed by their relative size in descending in order to a low of 250 among the Chimariko). Territories varied, with the Achomawi and Atsegewi having the largest at 9090 km2 with the lowest population density, and the Wintu having the second largest territory, with the second highest density per sq. km.

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The Wintu reveals an incipient polity in which a single village and, at times, several villages are revealing a single headman. These were not chiefs or Big Men because their authority rested on respect as well as oratorical skills and multi-lingual skills that gave them the capacity to persuade and coordinate actions among their villager(s). There was a division of labor, with some vocations receiving high prestige. There was no inequality or formal rankings as is the case with kin-based polities of horticulturalists. Thus, these mini societies were just one step beyond nomadic hunter-gatherers in early human societal evolution. The data assembled revealed that the Wintu were part of a prestige goods economy which linked distant groups in economic exchange, and these exchanges utilized some of these goods, shells, as a currency where varying amounts of bundled shells were functioning as a standardized medium of exchange. This dramatically increases the velocity of exchange as well as its reach across these small-scale societies. Trade also revolved around traditional bulk goods, such as food and other raw materials. Additionally, there was a pattern among Wintu as the most dominant population for arranged marriages of leaders to women of other populations, thus creating political alliances that could be drawn upon in warfare (as is often the case with settled horticulturalists). Re-conceptualizing Inter-Societal Systems for Pre-modern Societies. Chase-Dunn and Mann remained ambivalent over whether the Wintu constituted an incipient core in Wallerstein’s sense, but our view is that Wallerstein’s criterion for core is too rigid. As emphasized in Chap. 2, WSA fails to recognize that pre-literate populations were clearly evolving toward small geo-economic and geo-political systems, even before horticulture and agriculture. There were trade networks and markets facilitated by a medium of exchange and the flow of a variety of goods between mini societies. This shows the very beginnings of geo-economic and geo-political formations in inter-societal systems of settled hunter-gatherers. Accordingly, Wallerstein’s formulation of WSA makes a mistake, at least theoretically (as opposed to empirical historical descriptions), in analyzing only the last 500 years and the rise of capitalism. Even though the scale of the dynamics of the societies studied by WSA is much greater than that of settled hunter-gatherers, the same fundamental processes were still in play, thereby making a more general theory possible, at least in principle. In Wallerstein’s formulation of WSA, inter-societal geo-economic systems were primarily characterized as “world economies” in an international division of labor that is politically organized as an interstate system defined by the unequal exchange of goods and services (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 27; Wallerstein 1974a). This conceptualization of inter-societal geo-economic system emphasizes the exchange of “bulk goods” or, in context of production, elaborate chains of commodity production which link the extraction of resources in one society to the consumption of a fully processed good in another society (Wallerstein 1986). Compared to Wallerstein’s conceptualization of inter-societal geo-economic systems, Chase-Dunn and Halls’ (1997: 52) reformulation of world-systems is an improvement because it includes the exchange of prestige goods, or trade in

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luxurious and socially important goods that were important for the reproduction of power structures in inter-societal systems and, moreover, were often exchanged by pre-literate populations of the distant past. Wallerstein (1974a) contends these types of exchanges between societies are not important and produce no systemic effect because the exchange of bulk goods is more central to the formation and reproduction of world-systems. However, others argue the exchange of prestige goods is important, especially in geo-political dynamics, where leaders can monopolize the supply of these goods that act as an important source of symbols of stability and change in power structures (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993; Blanton and Feinman 1984; Schneider 1977). Accordingly, Chase-Dunn and Halls’ reformulation accounts for the multiplex network structure of world-systems where exchanges within INs, PGNs, PMNs, and BGNs influence each other. This approach is helpful for understanding geo-economic, political, and cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems, while avoiding the Marxian assumption of the primacy of economic exchanges in these systems. Dynamics of Inter-Societal Systems. Drawing on the comparative framework of WSA, Chase-Dunn and colleagues developed a theoretical model of dynamic change in pre-modern world-systems. The iteration model of world-system development identifies how demographic pressures, ecological constraint and degradation, economic relations, and political–military relations contribute to the evolution of world-systems. A core process in this model is the onset of warfare. In their model, demographic pressures induce spatial circumscription and inter-polity warfare which produce cycles of population growth and decline (Fletcher et al. 2011), as Herbert Spencer has emphasized and as scholar like Carniero (1967, 1970) who brought Spencer’s (1874–94) arguments into in early analysis of inter-societal in the second half of the twentieth century. Specifically, population growth in a society requires an intensification of production to meet growing demand for necessities. A growth in production requires greater material inputs which leads to environmental degradation and the need for new ecological resources. The ecological pressure from intensified production may require emigration into new territories or internal conflict over resources and/or conflict with other societies over their resources. Military conflict over territory induces the formation of hierarchical structures among societies built around differential levels of political and economic power. The formation of inter-societal hierarchies produces asymmetrical exchanges between societies that reinforce political and economic power differentials, with societies possessing a high degree of political and economic power able to innovate new technologies to permit greater and more production allowing for population growth. This iterative cycle of population growth, environmental degradation, emigration, and conflict drives the increasing scale, complexity, and integration of new societies into pre-modern world-systems, and world empires more specifically. This model as outlined by Chase-Dunn is reproduced in Fig. 3.4. The question of whether this model is helpful for explaining the evolution of modern world-systems remains largely unanswered by Chase-Dunn and his colleagues. In earlier work, Chase-Dunn and his colleagues contend the emergence of

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Population size +

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Fig. 3.4 Christopher Chase-Dunn’s iteration model

anti-systemic movements from the “New Left” will challenge the existing power structure and institutional arrangements of global capitalism (Chase-Dunn and Roberts 2012; Chase-Dunn and Boswell 2000; Chase-Dunn and Almeida 2020). However, this social movement perspective on world-system evolution and transition departs from the predictions of the comparative framework formulated by Chase-Dunn and colleagues. Specifically, given economic and ecological crises in the modern world-system and rise of new political and economic powers (e.g., China), one would predict the onset of intensive warfare and the formation of new inter-societal hierarchies, as we noted in Chap. 1. Indeed, Chase-Dunn and colleagues have, in recent years, empirically described patterns of rise and demise of societies in early historical periods, often fueled by warfare, with perhaps the implication for what is likely in the future. In this case, there is not an “end of history” argument about the eventual rise of future world-system revolving around socialism as so many world-systems theorist hope and like others, such as Robinson (1998, 2001, 2004), have predicted.

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Nonetheless, Chase-Dunn’s work has done the most to advance WSA especially for formulating general model of inter-societal systems and dynamics. Specifically, his work stretched the time frame to small pre-literature societies engaged in small-scale geo-economic and geo-political interactions. He has done the same for the conceptualization of the core, periphery, and semi-periphery, which now contain elements of each other in actual societies. He has added a useful notion of types of resources in the exchange relations among societies, a typology that draws attention to the exchanges among members of pre-literate societies. And his iteration model brings into analysis early views of scholars like Iban Khaldun, Hebert Spencer, and Vilfredo Pareto that posit many of the dynamics of all inter-societal systems, especially those about cyclical nature of geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal formations. As we will see, these ideas have become central to some newer approaches.

3.2.3

Randall Collins on the Dynamics of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems

Working outside of the WSA tradition,7 Collins (1981) first advanced theory of geo-political dynamics in the modern world-system by presenting an analysis on the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire. In making this prediction, Collins drew from data and ideas that originated outside of the world-system tradition. Indeed, in contrast to WSA, Collins developed an actual theory with explicit propositions, which are outlined in Table 3.1. Geo-Political empires are created by warfare and, to a degree, sustained by coercive activities to control those populations that have been conquered. But other more internal forces are also critical, such as size of a conquering population vis-à-vis the population to be controlled; level of technologies; resource levels; capacity to mobilize and legitimate concentrations of power; and, most significantly, extent of a marchland advantage, or the degree to which a marching population conquering neighboring societies is protected from potential enemies by natural barriers, such as mountains, oceans, deserts, and other ecological obstructions, that allow societies building an empire to fight wars on just one front, or a small proportion of its borders. Such was the case for the Soviet Union, as it marched out from Moscow with the frigid lands constituting Siberia allowing it to fight along a more limited front line. And, as territory is taken, an emerging empire can extract resources from those conquered and thereby sustain its coercive force. Yet, as the extent of territory increases, several countervailing forces are set into motion: (1) the level of ethnic and cultural diversity increases (as ever-more

7

Much later in his career, Collins teamed with Immanuel Wallerstein in several projects, although it is not clear if he fully bought into the notion of core, periphery, and semi-periphery, especially because he was interested in geo-political systems.

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Table 3.1 Key propositions derived from Randall Collins’ theory of empire building 1. The probability of winning a war between societies is a positive and additive function of: A The level of resource advantage of one society over another, which is a positive and multiplicative function of: 1. The level of technology of one society vis-à-vis another society 2. The level of production of one society vis-à-vis another society 3. The size of one warring population compared to another B The degree of marchland advantage of one society over another is a positive and additive function of the extent to which one nation has natural buffers (mountains, oceans, lakes, deserts, other societies) on most of its borders and does not have to engage enemies on multiple fronts 2. The likelihood that a society will conquer other societies to form an empire is a function of the extent to which its marchland advantage can endure as the empire grows and the level of technology, production, wealth, and population to wage war and consolidate territorial gains far from the marching society’s home base 3. The size of a society’s empire is a positive and additive function of its capacity to: A B C D

Avoid a showdown war with another marchland state Sustain a marchland advantage over all potential enemies Maintain territories with standing armies from its home base Maintain the logistical capacities for communications, movement of troops, and military hardware around a territory, which is a positive function of its technologies and infrastructural development across its empire and which is a negative function of the size of its territory and distance from its home base E Prevent the transfer, diffusion, or theft of its superior technologies to the subordinate populations of its empire and to potential enemy marching states 4. The collapse of an empire is a positive and additive function of: A Warfare with another advancing society creating another empire B Overextension of an empire beyond its logistical capacity to hold and defend territories C The adoption of a society’s superior military technologies by societies that are potential enemies and/or by segments of its conquered populations D The capacity of armies of other societies or rebels within the empire of a society to gain access to, and/or control of, the infrastructures developed by the polity of an empire

populations are subjugated) and creates problems of potential revolt, which dramatically raise the logistical loads on a conquering polity that consume resources and pose threats of internal revolt and guerilla warfare; (2) the level of logistical loads for material resources—supplies, weapons—as well as people (soldiers, administrators), and information (orders, directives, guidelines) across larger territories increase dramatically the further from a home base an expanding empire expands; (3) the marchland advantage will also be lost as an empire expands out from its home base and increasingly encounters resistance along an ever-expanding front line, often to the point of confronting another expanding empire (thereby creating a “showdown war” between two or expanding empires); and (4) technological advantages of an expanding empire will eventually be lost as those conquered or new enemies copy technologies of a hegemon and, thereby, offer more effective resistance preventing further movement of the hegemon or even weakened control by the hegemon over its conquered territories.

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Put simply, these countervailing forces work against further expansion of an empire as logistical loads increase, the marchland advantage is lost, technologies to conquer and control populations are copied and deployed to resist the power of the marching polity, and as societies yet conquered increase in number and force a hegemon to fight on an ever-larger front. Based on this perspective, Collin argues there is a built-in correction to the size of geo-political formations. Specifically, he contends six million square miles is the point where an empire may be over-extended (although the empire of Mongols was considerably larger than this). But no other empire besides that of the Mongols has gotten much bigger than six million square miles, and Collins views the list of countervailing forces as the key to understanding the size of a geo-political formation. Indeed, most are considerable smaller than six million square miles. In addition to the propositions listed in Table 3.1, the processes outlined by Collins are also outlined as a model in Fig. 3.5 that reveals both direct, indirect, and feedback causal chains. The forces increasing economic production—technology, size of population, and level of natural resources—are on the left of the model and primarily exogenous to the formation of geo-political structures. Growth in economic production is important because it increases the level of capital formation—both transactional capital like money and also the implements and structures of production. The accumulation of surplus capital increases the likelihood of wealth being used to consolidate power, particularly around its coercive and administrative bases, although consolidating power can also lead to efforts to legitimate the consolidation of power through symbols and ideologies (the symbolic base of power). As the coercive base of power is institutionalized, there is often a mobilization of that coercive power, backed up by the administrative base, as long as neighboring societies are not too powerful, and a society possesses a marchland advantage. For a marcher polity, success in warfare leads the accumulation of greater wealth, thereby encouraging continued warfare and resource extraction from other societies. In the end, most polities engaged in this form of geo-political formation eventually reach a point of over-extension on two fronts: (1) large and culturally diverse populations that are resentful of their domination by a marcher polity require ever-greater efforts devoted to social control, which consumes resources and only arouses resentments of those who have been conquered and (2) larger territories must now be defended and, increasingly, on more fronts, thereby weakening the marchland advantage and spreading coercive forces thin across the expanded boundaries of the empire. The flow of the model from left to right outlines the causal relations involved in these processes. As is evident, in the flow of causal relations among the forces in the boxes have positive (+) signs on the arrows connecting them, which means that from the increase in production through the mobilization for warfare and the creation of a larger geo-political formation push a marcher state onward, at least to the point of over-extension and/or defeat by another marcher state. The reverse causal arrows are also mostly positive, which means there is a positive feedback loop that drives the movements of the emerging marcher state and the formation of a geo-political formation.

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Fig. 3.5 Modeling of Randall Collins’ theory of geo-politics

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The negative signs (−) connecting the reverse causal chains running left to right in the figure outline what happens with over-extension and/or defeat by another marcher state. Once negative values enter the model, they feedback via other negative causal links, but equally important, when a negatively signed arrow hits a box which had positive sign (+) connected to other boxes, the negative effect is carried along a chain of what had been positively signed relations and, thereby, reverses the effect. For example, when over-extension negatively affects success in warfare, a marcher state is losing in wars, and the negative effects continue down the chain originally connected by positive arrows; losing battles decreases the capacity to mobilize for warfare, which undermines the coercive and administrative bases of power and its consolidation and legitimization by symbols and ideologies which feedback and lessen production and level of wealth that can be used to consolidate power and engage in warfare. The positive signs now work to decrease the values of all those forces that were original created and pushed a marcher state into forming a geo-political formation. The result is that a marcher state must retreat to its home base and, moreover, may in the end be conquered by another polity and thus become a defeated state in another geo-political system. Thus, once these countervailing forces kick in, as is outlined in the reverse causal chains flowing left to right in Fig. 3.5, the capacity to hold territory and control restive populations declines. Additionally, the capacity to extract resources and wealth to finance power and its mobilization into a coercive force declines. Consequently, the legitimacy of centers of power is eroded as “success” (which brings prestige in the homeland) in controlling territories declines, often setting the stage for revolts in conquered territories as well as loss of legitimacy of political leaders in the homeland. And, because the production of military armaments and the costs of deploring armies consume the wealth of a society, there is little capital left after an empire implodes to kick start the domestic economy of a society to generate wealth on which a polity depends for legitimacy. The result is a geo-political empire slowly disintegrates and, more rapidly, it loses a showdown war. And once a geo-political formation collapses, it is generally difficult to re-emerge because its technological advantage, high production vis-à-vis enemies, resource and marchland advantages, and coercive capacities have been reduced and, in the case of a showdown war, destroyed and often plundered. Overall, there is a kind of rhythm in geo-political dynamics revolving around expansion and contraction when countervailing forces kick in and cause a retreat to the home base of a core political actor in an inter-societal system revolving around the use of coercive and administrative bases of power. There are some additional considerations brought forward by Collins’ model of geo-political formation and dynamics. One is that geo-political systems are very much affected by the ecological barriers of the territories in which they operate. A related constraint on geo-political formations is the costs and logistical problems associated with formations that cut across oceans. These geo-political formations are not likely to endure long because of the high logistical loads and costs of maintaining forces so far from a home base, especially given the costs of moving resources across large expanses of water. And even with high technology to move

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resources (such as jet airplanes), the costs of this technology are very high, thereby limiting its use over the long run. And control of conquered populations also becomes even more difficult with distance from a home base, even when the land mass is contiguous and doubly difficult when the land mass is not contiguous. Thus, geo-political formations are, on the one hand, possible with centralization of power around coercive and administrative bases of power that can push into new territories. On the other hand, they are limited in their ability to control populations when far from their home base because of the difficulty with deploying adequate personnel—military and administrative—to monitor and control the population. Put simply, geo-political formations are more likely to disintegrate when logistics and infrastructures for movement across territories are difficult and expensive, and when a formation grows too large to defend its acquired territories or to control the populations within these territories. Thus, the social and natural ecology of a geo-political formation is important.

3.2.4

Fernand Braudel and Randall Collins on Markets

Fernand Braudel. As part of his larger project on the history of material life in Europe, Braudel (1977 [1979], 1982) has, much like early sociologists such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel (see Turner 2013), conceptualized the transforming effects of markets. We emphasize this transforming effect with the emergence of quasi-markets among early hunting and gathering populations, and these effects increase with each stage of development in human societies through horticulture, agrarianism, industrialism, and post-industrialism. Indeed, one of the forces driving societal evolution is the increasing dynamism of markets that have, in the eyes of WSA theorists, now linked the world together. For Braudel, markets are distinguished between “lower” and “upper” levels, with lower markets involving small-scale exchange involving: (1) person-to-person barter; (2) person-to-person exchanges using money; (3) peddlers who personally make and sell goods for money and, sometimes, extending credit; and (4) shopkeepers who sell goods that they do not make for money and on credit. In our view, the first human societies were involved in (1) and (2), with evidence of the reliance on “brokers” for smoothing transactions among individuals. And even with such simple markets, small inter-societal systems emerged during the earliest periods of human societies. While Braudel is more interested in the history of Europe than the first societies, his conception of lower markets is useful for understanding very early inter-societal systems. Lower level markets had the power to link small-scale societies together in simple inter-societal systems. Braudel classifies upper level markets as fair or relatively stable geographical places where higher volumes of goods and bought and sold with money and on credit by numerous sellers. We argue that elements of even these markets were evident in early human societies because relative stable locations for market transactions were often established, with multiple sellers and, at times, even brokers

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negotiating exchanges of goods and often exchanges involving money manufactured, as was the case of the neighbors of the Wintu of Northern California and the Chumash of Central California (Arnold 1987). Additionally, upper level markets are constituted by trade centers or permanent locations where brokers and bourgeoisie sell goods and services, including credit and other financial instruments. This level can be seen as an elaboration of what even simple societies had begun, especially among those who had created an accepted common media of exchange (that is, money). And the highest level of market for Braudel as he looked at the history of European markets was private markets, where merchants engaged in high-risk and high-profit speculation in trade revolving around long chains of exchange between producers and buyers (such as equities in ships carrying valued cargo, insurance of such ships, and other financial products that reduce risk for some but increase risk for other investors). These kinds of private market pyramid are into even more speculation in which money, itself, would eventually be bought and sold in a more speculative manner in higher-order markets, but for Braudel, it was financial instruments and products that facilitated long-distance trade, such as insurance on boats and their cargos, that were bought and sold in private higher-order markets. The proliferation of brokers (recall that brokers existed in early “silent trade” and beyond), coupled with money and efficient credit mechanism for speculative long-distance chains of buying and selling, led to the emergence of capitalism in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, these transformations, which had permitted longer distant trade among pre-literate populations, could not reach the proportions evident with the emergence of capitalism without the evolution of more stable state structures. Specifically, the consolidation of power around it is coercive and administrative bases created the conditions to consolidate domestic territories and markets into a coherent system through geo-political activities and formations of national systems of production and market activities. Yet, this consolidation of power also had to resist usurping surplus capital for its own narrow political needs, interests, and privilege. In Fig. 3.6, we model Braudel’s perspectives with few elaborations. Most of the arrows are positive, each force in the model is accelerating the other forces, indicating that once this process of movement is toward market and market differentiation and pyramiding, it would move rapidly, but as the negative feedback arrow is coming out of potential for collapse at the far right of the figure signals, once collapse occurs, it reduces via the positive arrows connecting everything else with the values of these various forces. So, there can be market collapse that is rapid and that can have large effects on markets in general, and thereby on production and material surplus as well as on the capacity of polity to consolidate and hold power. In the model presented in Fig. 3.6, increased production will lead to increasing market exchanges that, in turn, increases the size and differentiation of markets and eventually extended long-distance transaction chains. As these long-distance exchanges increase, often on the global scale, hierarchical pyramiding of markets will begin to emerge to trade the medium of exchange in lower-order markets in higher-order meta-markets. As Fig. 3.6 outlines, the creation of material surplus also allows polities to tax this surplus and thereby consolidate power. However, it is

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essential for polity to avoid overtaxing this surplus and to recognize that its interests reside in the continued expansion of trade to assure a steady flow of taxable wealth. Accordingly, centers of power evolving into a coherent state must see it as in their interest to encourage market development and to protect domestic players in this market. Thus, the state increasingly has an interest in coining money to increase the flow of products and services through markets (as well as to increase the speed and efficiency of taxation) and to tolerate and regulate the extension of credit and expansion of financial instruments in trade. They also begin to see the consolidation of power to protect economic interests of domestic actors in production and markets, especially against incursion by other geo-political actors in long-distance trade routes. It is on this structural base that capitalism could evolve and change the nature of geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal systems and, in the narrower terms of WSA, create the modern world-system. Randall Collins. In a seminal article drawing on Braudel and Weber to critique Marxist theorizing, Collins (1990) argued that market dynamics are “the engine of historical change.” This approach can be applied to societies before written history because once markets emerge, they transform social relations within and between societies that began to emerge over the last 10,000 years, and particularly over the last 500 years. And so, Collins was interested in long-distance markets described by Braudel and Weber rather than local, face-to-face markets in which tradition, custom, and interpersonal surveillance influenced prices, profits, and reduced exploitation—as had the markets that had dominated for most of human history. He was particularly interested in markets in which speculators and brokers manipulate exchanges in order to achieve large profits. There are second-level markets that he viewed as super-ordinate, involving some degree of monopoly or oligopoly to keep competition from driving prices and profits down, as Marx had predicted in his scenario about “the falling rate of profit” for capitalists. Figure 3.7 delineates some of the dynamics in these markets. According to the model in Fig. 3.7, markets tend to expand in a lateral manner across territories and, in so doing, they connect larger numbers of people and productive units into networks of exchange. After a certain degree of this lateral expansion, markets begin to expand vertically in the sense the medium of exchange in one market becomes the commodity that is exchanged in a higher-order market. Money, for example, is exchanged daily today in currency markets, which are highly speculative and often operate privately at nighttime when brokerage firms are closed. Once initiated, such pyramiding can take many forms as is the case today where futures, options, bonds, stocks, insurance premiums, mortgages, and other media facilitating exchanges in one lower-order market are now exchanged as a commodity in a higher level market—what Collins and we term “meta-markets.” Moreover, these media of exchange in lower markets can even now be bundled together as a new kind of commodity, and in extreme cases just what is being sold can be difficult to determine—as is often evident in “futures” and “derivative” markets today. These meta-markets operate above and beyond more local markets and always involve risk, sometimes great risk, in pursuit of high profits. And while they facilitate the creation of more markets in a society, they often collapse, as

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Braudel clearly understood. Collapse of a meta-market soon travels down to lower level markets, disrupting exchanges and often cascading to a recession or even a depression. Such collapses of markets, in turn, reduce production and technological innovation in a society, or across a system of societies and, indeed, potentially across every society in the world-system. Yet, at the same time, such disruptions can provide new opportunities for innovation in the long run. The critical point for Collins is that this view of markets provides an alternative to much Marxist thinking because markets are self-transforming, often independent of actual production and power dynamics. The dynamics of meta-markets revolve around expansion, vertical pyramiding, differentiation, creation of meta-organizations of high risk and speculation, and they have an independent effect on production and power dynamics. However, Marxists and others studying the world-system sometimes argue that it is these meta-markets as they collapse on a global scale that will generate the immiseration that Marx predicted for capitalism within societies, now on a global scale, that will create the conditions necessary for world socialism to emerge. There is some merit to this argument because global markets are indeed filled with meta-markets that have and will in the future periodically collapse. Still, polities are very much in play—despite the convictions of many world-system theorists. And, moreover, we believe that polities will respond to collapse or to potential collapse in ways that will confound many predictions about the ultimate collapse of capitalism and the inevitable emergence of world or even societal-level socialism. The stability of markets and the actions of both economic and political actors that drive geo-economic and geo-political formations need to be better theorized to understand inter-societal relations. Indeed, contrary to many predictions, geo-political actors may become more significant if indeed market hierarchies and meta-markets create instabilities within and between societies. One scenario that is rarely discussed is the creation of new geo-economic and geo-political blocks corresponding to territorial locations or to traditional alliances (e.g., U.S. Canada, and Europe) among societies into a series of new inter-societal systems.

3.2.5

Jack Goldstone on State Breakdown

In the tradition of historical sociology, Jack Goldstone (1991) presented in his Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, an analysis of modern agrarian societies between 1640 and 1840. As noted earlier, Peter Turchin borrowed from Goldstone’s analysis, which is an analysis of the longer frame of geo-political formation and disintegration in which states find themselves in fiscal crisis and facing revolt from not only peasants but elites as well. His analysis and the generalizations that can be drawn from his analysis can, when taken to a slightly higher level of abstraction, be applied to inter-societal systems. In Table 3.2, we convert his analysis into an inter-societal systems analysis and into a series of propositions

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Table 3.2 Extending Jack Goldstone’s theory of state breakdown to inter-state breakdown 1. In the long term, inter-state breakdown through mass mobilization of dependent and even core societies in the inter-societal systems increases when: A Population growth generates the demands among non-elites that exceed the productive capacity of the economy in either the core society or its dependent periphery or semi-periphery in either geo-economic or geo-political formations B Population growth exceeding the productive capacity of the economy generates price inflation C Population growth increases the proportion of younger age cohorts whose members are more likely to be easily mobilized for conflict, especially violent conflict D Population growth, as it causes price inflation and overburdens production, escalates rural misery, leading to large those in rural areas to migrate to urban areas in search of non-existent economic opportunities, thereby concentrating potential rebels 2. Longer-term potential for inter-state breakdown through mobilization of elites increases when: A Population growth in the core or dependent societies creates a larger pool of elites and semi-elites who seek patronage from the dominant polity B Population growth, as it causes price inflation, leads to a situation where: 1. Some traditional elites become financially strapped and, hence, desirous of patronage and positions to prevent their downward mobility 2. Some upwardly mobile elites, often gaining wealth through commercial activity, seek state patronage and positions as an affirmation of their new status 3. The longer-term potential for state breakdown, either at the core or in dependent societies, through fiscal crises increases when: A Population growth exceeds the capacity to absorb and provide goods for populations in subordinated societies and even more in the population of the core society, thereby causing price inflation because of shortages of goods B The dependent states’ mechanisms for revenue collection are inflexible, inefficient, or controlled by the core society C The dependent states’ efforts to seek new formulas for revenue collection arouse hostility and intervention by the core state D The core or dependent states’ expenditures on (i) military and (ii) social control activities exceed their ability to finance either, especially when: 1. States seek to expand military and social control activities during periods of rapid price inflation 2. The core state seeks to engage in military activities with other states to secure more resources to overcome the effects of price inflation, thereby incurring expenses that it cannot afford and thus reducing the power of the core vis-à-vis its dependent states E The core state and even dependent states are forced to borrow funds to sustain military, social control, and administrative activities 4. The likelihood of breakdown in an inter-societal system increases when: A Mass mobilization of non-elites in dependent societies, and even more so with mass mobilization in the core society B Mobilization for revolt among segments of elites in core or dependent societies C Fiscal crises within the core state or semi-peripheral state supporting the core escalate to the point where the core state’s control over masses within and among its dependent populations, both mass and elite populations, is weakened

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that apply Goldstone’s ideas into a much larger range of inter-societal systems, beyond early modern Europe. The prime mover is population growth that, in an inter-societal system, comes from linking more populations together as well as from increased birth rates. Inter-societal systems always face this problem of control of diverse and larger populations, and thus the very formation of an inter-societal system immediately sets into motion the mobilization of the dominant society to consolidate all bases of power: coercive, administrative, symbolic, and incentive (see Chap. 5, pp. 126– 130). Given that dominant societies take resources from subordinate ones, all the processes outlined in the first proposition will immediately come into play. In inter-societal systems, there are also elites of the dominant and the subordinate societies that seek resources from the polity as payoffs for coordinating resource extraction and moving these resources from dependent to core societies, while maintaining social control over those producing these resources. And, often elites seek even more patronage from the core state, creating a situation that can lead elites to de-legitimate centers of power. In the context of Proposition 3, the larger population often experience shortages because of the movement of resources to the core society, thereby assuring that production among dependent societies creates shortages that, in turn, cause restiveness among dependent populations that, in essence, are being exploited for the benefit of the core. And, if core states’ mechanisms for collecting revenue are inefficient, as they often are, they need to support local elites to keep non-elites in subordinate societies in line. And even if the dominant society employs military force, this can often exceed the ability to pay for this force, especially with price inflation over shortages. In the end, revolt can come from a combination of non-elite mobilization in dependent societies and even in the core society of the inter-societal system, often joined with dissatisfied elites in dependent societies and especially in semi-peripheral societies. Thus, inter-societal system, much like individual societal systems, always confront social control problems in the longer run from population growth that exceeds the productive capacity of economies, especially when resources are being pulled from one society to the other, thus setting up mobilization of not only non-elite but also more affluent members of the core or dependent societies, especially those in the semi-periphery. Overall, the propositions in Table 3.2 emphasize the simple fact that, over the long run, inter-societal formations will have integrative problems, linked to population growth whether through extension of the number of societies in the inter-societal system and/or population increase if the core, dominant society or any of its dependent societies is in the inter-societal system. As the core or key satellite societies experience these integrative problems, the inter-society system becomes vulnerable to breakdown and/or invasion by another marcher state or by economic actors in a dominant geo-economic state or its dependent states. Inter-societal systems thus reveal inherent forces that, in the end, weaken them and lead to their disintegration.

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Ecological Theories and Inter-Societal Dynamics

Gerhard Lenski. A general theory of inter-societal systems requires an ecological inquiry because the dynamic relations between governments and economies, and actors therewithin, are distributed across geographical and ecological space. Since its inception, sociology has adopted some form of ecological theorizing which continues to be elaborated upon to the present day. Thus, some aspects of ecological theorizing are useful for understanding inter-societal formations and dynamics. Indeed, as Gerhard Lenski (2005: 115) argues “….it is clear that the chief threat to the survival of individual societies have been engaged in a deadly game of musical chairs in which the vast majority have been eliminated by losing their territorial base and its resources (sic) to more powerful neighbors.” Based on this ecological viewpoint, geo-economic and geo-political systems represent competition among different types of societies at different levels of development—e.g., core, periphery, and semi-periphery—with selection operating as a sorting process with core societies dominating for a given time, only to be overtaken and outcompeted by subordinate or peripheral and semi-peripheral societies. However, contemporary WSA assumes that as world-level system evolves, these selection processes will be suspended and replaced by new kind of world-level economy and presumable polity as well. An ecological approach would caution against this assumption and provides an alternative evolutionary perspective of inter-societal systems based on a recurring cycle of “rise and demise,” as Chase-Dunn and colleagues (e.g., Dunn and Hall 1997) have argued for dominant and subordinate societies in early inter-societal systems. Lenski (2005: 118) offers his perspective on the evolution of the global system of societies over the last 10,000 years. This perspective is outlined in Fig. 3.8. However, one predicted outcome from this perspective may not be entirely correct: world level in inequality may be declining because of the rapid development and industrialization of very poor agrarian societies which reduces the gulf between industrial and post-industrial societies, on the one hand, and the most developed societies on the other. Nonetheless, the basic point that there is a high level of inequality within and between societies is, essentially, correct in the contemporary world-system today. WSA might add that a greater proportion of societies, and people within these societies, are more connected to world-level markets than ever before in the history of the world. And given that the economies of many societies are part of a capitalist world economy, and also a supranational geo-political system, the number of societies that are a part of a larger system of societies has increased. Still, given that societies have throughout human history competed to varying degrees with each other, Lenski might caution—were he still alive—that a more integrated and less conflictual as well as competitive world-system does not look promising because capitalistic markets in geo-economic systems generate competition at every level of societies and between societies and that geo-political systems have always evolved

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100 Variations among societies as a result of processes of change in individual societies adapting to their ecological and socio-cultural environments Inherent tendency of societies to expand in size and needs resulting in competition among societies for territories and resources

Trends in Human History

Inter-societal selection favoring societies with greater stores of technological information to build more dynamic economies, stronger polities with greater coercive force

Growth of human population Growth of the average size of societies and communities Increased permanence of communities Expansion of societies into new environments Increasing impact of societies on biophysical environment Invention of new symbol systems Increasing store of technological information Increasing store of other kinds of cultural information Growth in quantity, diversity, and complexity of material products Increasing complexity of social structures Increasing inequality within and among societies Accelerating rate of social and cultural change

Fig. 3.8 Gerhard Lenski’s assessment of global evolution in the global system of societies in the last 10,000 years

as some societies fall into decline and other societies develop—as is evident in the work of Turchin and all those who have analyzed societal warfare. Amos Hawley. Urban ecology was the first ecological approach in sociology, emphasizing the dynamics of communities. Later organizational ecology became a prominent, but both urban and organizational ecologies were not macro-theoretical perspectives. One of the original founders of urban ecology, Hawley (1986), shifted gears near the end of his career and developed a more macro-level ecological theory that has some relevance in analyzing inter-societal systems. The greater a society is exposed to new information and knowledge from other societies, the more likely is the society to change, grow, and evolve. However, high mobility costs—that is, the costs in energy and other resources as well as the infrastructure to move people, resources, and information from one society to the other—can slow the rate of information and knowledge flowing into a society, and hence the less it can grow. Exchange relations with other societies and the building of infrastructures to facilitate exchange—paths, roads, canals, boats, docks, ports, etc.—lowers mobility costs which increases the rate of new information, particularly technologies, spreading across any system of societies, and hence the more societies in this system will grow and evolve. New information also increases production which, in turn, increases selection for distribution of resources and information, which in turn increases markets and the infrastructure for moving goods, information, and resources within a society and to other societies. And with increase in exchanges of resource between and within societies, the more likely is polity to consolidate the four bases of power—coercion,

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administration, symbolic, and incentive—which in turn leads polity to regulate the flow of resources. And the more the polity regulates the flow of resources, the more likely is this polity to engage in geo-political activity and to seek to expand its influence, especially if mobility costs are low because of the development of infrastructures for distribution and for conducting warfare. While Hawley’s analysis is not directed at explaining geo-economics and geo-politics dynamics, flows of information and technology into and between societies are important for understanding the reduction of mobility costs. Without lower mobility costs, geo-economic exchanges among societies would be severely limited, and the formation of geo-political systems would be more difficult and costly. Thus, at times, infrastructures for geo-economics and resource exchanges can encourage geo-political activities using these infrastructures and/or building out new infrastructures. Overall, Hawley introduces the notion that expanding socio-cultural formations within ecological space depends upon infrastructures moving information, technology, material resources, and people that lead to economic growth and the broader evolution of institutional domains in societies, and these same infrastructures, especially those facilitating mobility, can be used to expand a society as well as an inter-societal system. Reduced mobility costs create incentives for building distributive infrastructures that, in turn, can generate more economic capital and resources that can be taxed by polity to increase distributive infrastructures in an upward spiral of development. Moreover, as more wealth is created by expanded production, populations grow because expanded resources allow for new members to a society to sustain themselves, and, as populations grow, a society becomes more stratified which, in turn, leads to the expansion of the social control activities of polity. As polity expands, especially its coercive and administrative bases to effect increased social control within a society, this same goal can also encourage geo-political activity in order to get access to new technologies and resources of other populations. And so, if distributive infrastructures have expanded from patterns of geo-economics, they can be used for geo-political activities. And the more developed these infrastructures, the lower the mobility costs of military movements and, hence, the more likely a growth polity seeking to control a growing population that is increasingly stratified will seek additional resources from other populations through conquest of other societies in a geo-political formation. Such are the implications of Hawley’s late movement to macro-level ecological analysis.

3.2.7

World Society Theory and Geo-Cultural Dynamics

A new perspective on inter-societal systems emerged in the 1980s, emphasizing how the formulation and diffusion of global culture and institutional systems has had common effects across societies in the modern world-system. Specifically, the world society perspective contends contemporary nation-states are constructed from worldwide models that are propagated through global cultural and associational

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processes (Meyer et al. 1997: 144–145). This core proposition of the world society perspective generated a vast literature explaining how these models define and legitimate the structures, regulations, and local norms of societies. However, this literature is primarily focused on the emergence and diffusion of global culture since the 1940s, with particular focus on the rationality, scientific thinking, bureaucratic organization, and professionalization (Boli 2005). We find this focus to be far too narrow because geo-cultural dynamics have been central to inter-societal systems since the first systems of relations among pre-literate societies. Still, we can extend the fundamental propositions of the world society perspective identifying important geo-cultural dynamics driving the formation of not only recent geo-cultural systems but also geo-cultural systems among pre-literate societies, and every other type of inter-societal formation between these early forms of human societies and their present trajectory today. The basic premise of world society theory is that contemporary nation-states exhibit a high degree of structural and regulatory isomorphism despite vast differences in resources, power, and national culture. This isomorphic patterning of societies demonstrates that global geo-cultural and institutional dynamics are inducing a convergence toward a common mode of governance and institutional development within societies. This perspective from world society theory provides an alternative perspective of social change. In contrast to early modernization perspectives, the world society perspective identifies global culture, institutions, and actors as the primary force of social change rather than an endogenous and unilineal force of economic development. Moreover, the world society perspective challenges WSA over the primacy of material interests and power dynamics in explaining social change. Instead, this perspective conceptualizes states, organizations, and individuals as enactors of cultural scripts propagated at the global level (Shorette et al. 2018; Bromley and Meyer 2015). Accordingly, geo-cultural dynamics emerge from the formulation and then diffusion of these scripts. The core proposition of world society theory is based on the notion that cultural principles and institutions affecting social actors and societies operate at the inter-societal level. We would add that the identification of inter-societal geo-culture is important for explaining the emergence, consolidation, and disintegration of pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems. However, as previously noted, world society theory only applies this important insight to contemporary inter-societal systems. A degree of homogeneity in the structures and institutions of societies within inter-societal systems is expected given the density of interaction between societies and the exchange of social information between different social actors. An important property among various forms of pre-literate society is the high degree of structural equivalence in their patterns of social organization. Though differences always exist among societies because of adaptations to different ecologies, the structure of nomadic hunter-gatherers, settled hunter-gatherers, simple horticulturalist, advanced horticultural societies, early agrarian societies, advanced agrarian societies, industrial, and post-industrial all reveal structural equivalences or isomorphism, to use the term of the society culture literature. What

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is technically called “regular equivalence” in the network literature, we are terming structural equivalence to emphasize that similar social structures have similar cultures, as is the case among “societal types” marking the evolution of human societies. The tendency toward structural and cultural equivalence in the board sweep of societal types in human history is what gives us confidence that data on populations in all of these societal types, particularly the pre-literature populations, offer a good clue to what pre-literature populations were like before history and even before what archeology can retrieve. For such not to be the case would mean that simple hunter-gatherers waited almost 400,000 years to form inter-societal systems, which hardly can be the case. It is for this reason that the anthropological literature of the last 150 years provides a look into the distant past of human societies, and if hunter-gathers who survived into the twentieth century have inter-societal systems, it is likely that the first societies of humans would also have them. Of course, circumscription was less intense in early human societies with, at best, about six million people on earth. Yet humans will gravitate to the best ecological niches, and once migrations of this nature occur, circumscription will lead to inter-societal systems of various kinds. Hence, a theory of inter-societal dynamics must be able to explain these first inter-societal systems, and those that have evolved over the last 400,000 years and, of course, those that will evolve in the future. And so, while the world society perspective is about modernity, it still makes the important point that inter-societal formations always have a cultural element that varies depending upon the geo-economic and geo-political elements. Meyer (2009) summarizes the world society perspective with a set of interrelated processes. The emergence of global civil society in inter-societal systems induces the formation of prescriptive models about human actors and organizations. The diffusion of these global models through dense networks of professionals, technocrats, and advocacy organizations creates a degree of isomorphism in internal institutions and organizational structures of societies. Isomorphism is another angle on structural equivalence, and so, if evolving societies reveal structural isomorphism, they will also reveal cultural convergence. Moreover, the more structurally and culturally equivalent societies are the more likely will they be receptive to diffusion of cultural systems from similar societies in their environments. However, if the internal structural and cultural organization within a society deviates significantly from that of other societies, cultural diffusion is less likely, unless strong geo-political or geo-economic forces are in play in the relations among societies. Thus, differences in the structure and culture of a society will lead to a “decoupling” between the prescriptions of global models and the organizational behaviors within societies, at least for a time. Still, culture is an important force in creating, sustaining, or limiting relations among societies, and hence it is useful to think about geo-cultural inter-societal systems, just as we do for geo-political and geo-economic inter-societal systems. According to the world society perspective, inter-societal systems are defined by as increasingly integrated social system in which models of social definition and action affecting various actors as system subunits are constructed with a common

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cultural framework (McNeely 2012). Based on this definition, geo-cultural inter-societal formations are defined as the institutionalized aspects of symbol systems—categories, rules, principles, values, ideologies, normative prescriptions and proscriptions, and models and other fundamental cultural elements—that diffuse across societies and provide common templates for organizing corporate actors in different societies. And hence, the more dynamic and extensive are networks among societies and the more structural equivalent they become, the more likely is a common culture to emerge among societies engaged in geo-economic and geo-political relations. In the modern world-system, the world culture is composed of democratic norms and values and ideologies of rational-legal order. Specifically, the cognitive and ontological models of reality specify the nature, purposes, technology, sovereignty, control, and resources of nation-states and other actors based on scientific, professional, and legal analyses that define the proper functioning of states, societies, and individuals according to cognitive and instrumental standards (Meyers et al. 1997: 149). In many ways, the world culture perspective harkens back to older “modernization” models of societal development, whereby the goal was to change the culture and motive states of actors toward a more modern profile. In so doing, it was assumed that modern actors would work to create modern societies. The idea was not wholly wrong, but it ignored the extent to which more advanced societies often saw their interests as residing in exploitation of underdeveloped societies rather than their development and modernization. Our goal in Chap. 7 on geo-cultural dynamics is an effort to re-introduce culture into theorizing about pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems, not just at where modernity meets underdevelopment but where societies with similar structures develop similar cultures.

3.3

Conclusion

The approaches presented in this chapter are far from exhaustive, and we could review many additional approaches from the vast literature on inter-societal systems across the social sciences, as well as adjacent literatures that can inform analysis of inter-societal systems. Our goal, however, is to extract and use ideas from specific approaches to develop a more general set of models and theoretical principles for understanding inter-societal dynamics. We have deliberately identified and utilized perspectives beyond contemporary WSA to examine inter-societal theorizing from new vantage points, while, at the same time, drawing from a representative range of the leading scholars working within the WSA tradition. Together, we think it possible to present more abstract models and propositions about the dynamics of inter-societal systems and the development of geo-economic, geo-political formations, and geo-cultural formations. A general theory of inter-societal will be less historical and even less empirical but more comprehensive and less prone to restricting analysis to only the last

References

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500 years of inter-societal evolution. Moreover, in seeking to develop theoretical models and principles that can explain all types of inter-societal formations for all human history, we necessarily must theorize at a more abstract level and, thereby, avoid the strong tendency to commitments to a particular ideology and/or end of history argument. By simply trying to develop models and theoretical principles that account for the dynamics of world-systems, we can avoid what we see as the weak points in some forms of inter-societal analysis. Indeed, in our view, inter-societal dynamics will constantly shift between the relative strength of their geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural components, revealing no easily pre-determined pattern and outcome. If anything, we might predict increasing geo-politics among large military powers as a more likely intermediate phase than anything approaching the replacement world-level capitalism with socialism. We might also predict more cultural convergence as societies become more developed, but geo-conflicts can easily suspend cultural diffusion among enemies. Indeed, we would predict that conflict within and between inter-societal systems is more likely than integration in the near to intermediate future, especially as the effects of continued population growth (despite decline in rates of such growth but on a very large base) coupled with what will be dramatic effects of climate change on the ecology of all societies and inter-societal systems. In fact, it is even plausible to see a retraction from the current system of geo-economics, given what might occur under conditions of rapid ecological change, an increase in geo-politics among the large economic and military power in the world today. Nonetheless, we need a general theory of inter-societal systems to understand any trajectory of relations among societies on earth, and such a general theory should be able to specify the conditions under which geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural come into play and the conditions under which such formations increase or decrease integration or disintegration of inter-societal formations.

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Goldstone, Jack A. 1991. Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world. Berkeley: University of California Press. 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. Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1989. Global formation: Structures of the world-economy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Hall. 1993. Comparing world-systems: Concepts and working hypotheses. Social Forces 71 (4): 851–886. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Hall. 1997. Rise and demise, comparing world-systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and E. Susan Manning. 2002. City systems and world systems: Four millennia of city growth and decline. Cross-Cultural Research 36 (4): 379–398. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Eugene N. Anderson, eds. 2005. The historical evolution of world-systems. New York: Palgrave. 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. Inoue, Hiroko, Alexis Alvarez, Eugene N. Anderson, Andrew Owen, Rebecca Alvarez, Kirk Lawrence, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2015. Urban scale shifts since the bronze age: Upsweeps, collapses, and semiperipheral development. Social Science History 39 (2): 175– 200. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Bruce Lerro. 2014. Social change: Globalization from the stone age to the present. New York: Routledge. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Hioko Inoue, Teresa Neal, and Evan Heimlich. 2015. The development of world-systems. Sociology of Development 1 (1): 149–172. Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before European hegemony. The world system Ad 1250–1350. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frank, Andre Gunder and Barry K. Gills (Eds). 1994. The world system: Five hundred years or five thousand? New York: Routledge. Amin, Samir. 1991. The ancient world-system versus the modern capitalist world-system. Review 14(3): 349–385. 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. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The modern world-system: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1986. Societal development, or development of the world-system? International Sociology 1 (1): 3–17. Blanton, Richard, and Gary Feinman. 1984. The Mesoamerican world-system. American Anthropologist 86: 673–692. Schneider, Jane. 1977. Was there a pre-capitalist world-system? Peasant Studies 6: 20–29. Fletcher, Jesse, Jacob Apkarian, Robert A. Hanneman, Hiroko Inoue, Kirk Lawrence, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2011. Demographic regulators in small-scale world-systems. Structure and Dynamics 5(1). Carneiro, Robert L. 1967. On the relationship between size of population and complexity of social organization. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 23 (3): 234–243. 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. Spencer, Herbert. 1874. The study of sociology. New York: D. Appleton. 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.

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Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Paul Almeida. 2020. Global struggles and social change: From prehistory to world revolution in the twenty-first century. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Robinson, William. 1998. Beyond nation-state paradigms: Globalization, sociology, and the challenge of transnational studies. Sociological Forum 13 (4): 561–594. Robinson, William. 2001. Social theory and globalization: The rise of a transnational state. Theory and Society 30 (2): 157–200. Robinson, William. 2004. A theory of global capitalism: Production, class and state in a transnational world. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Collins, Randall. 1981. Long-term social change and the territorial power of states. In Sociology since midcentury, ed. R. Collins, 186–212. New York: Academic Press. Braudel, Fernand. 1977. Afterthoughts on material civilization and capitalism. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Braudel, Fernand. 1982. On history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2013. Contemporary sociological theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Arnold, Jeanne E. 1987. Craft specialization in the prehistoric channel Islands, California. University of California Publications in Anthropology 18. Collins, Randall. 1990. Market dynamics as the engine of historical change. Sociological Theory 8 (2): 111–135. Lenski, Gerhard. 2005. Ecological-evolutionary theory: Principles & applications. New York: Routledge. Hawley, Amos H. 1986. Human ecology: A theoretical essay. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meyer, John, John Boli, George Thomas, and Francisco Ramirez. 1997. World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology 103: 144–181. Boli, John. 2005. Contemporary developments in world culture. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 46 (5–6): 383–404. Shorette, Kristen, Kent Henderson, Jamie M. Sommer, and Wesley Longhofer. 2018. World society and the natural environment. Sociology Compass 11 (10): e12511. Bromley, Patricia, and John W. Meyer. 2015. Hyper-organization: Global organizational expansion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyer, John W. 2009. Reflections: Institutional theory and world society. In World society: The writing of John W. Meyer, ed. G. Krucken, G. Dori, 36–35. Oxford: McNeely, Connie L. 2012. World society theory. In The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of globalization, ed. George Ritzer. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog836 Turchin, Peter, Thomas E. Currie, Edward A. L. Turner, and Sergey Gavrilets. 2013. War, space, and the evolution of old world complex societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 110(41). Turchin, Peter, Thomas E. Currie, Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, Kevin Feeney, Daniel Mullins, Daniel Hoyer, et al. 2018. Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (2): E144–E151.

Chapter 4

Scientific Theorizing of Inter-Societal Dynamics

A persisting criticism of world-systems analysis (WSA) is the utilization of descriptive and idiographic approaches to conceptualize past and contemporary inter-societal systems. For instance, WSA and dependency theory are fundamentally classification systems of bi- or tri-models of hierarchies among societies in the capitalist world economy. However, as outlined in Chap. 2, a reformulation of dependency theory offers testable propositions for developing a more scientific theory of inter-societal systems (see pp. 38–41). Nonetheless, WSA is largely descriptive and limited to understanding the historical development of capitalism, the formation of inter-societal hierarchies, and the political as well as economic exploitation of underdeveloped societies. While WSA provides a significant contribution to theorizing inter-societal system by drawing attention to the evolution of the capitalist world economy, Wallerstein’s formulation of WSA is not equipped to explain past inter-societal systems that have existed since the first human societies, some 400,000 years ago. Thus, with some exceptions (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1989; Frank and Gills 1994; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993; Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998), WSA represents a sophisticated empirical and conceptual effort to explain the history of inter-societal systems over the last 500 years. Advancing contemporary theorizing on inter-societal systems requires developing more generalized explanatory models of inter-societal dynamics that account for not only the contemporary inter-societal system that has evolved over the last 500 years but also inter-societal systems that have existed during the other 399,995 thousand years of human social organization. Scientific theorizing is not about historical periods but about generic and universal phenomena in the biotic, physical, and socio-cultural universes. Accordingly, our goal in this book is to extract important concepts and explanations from theories and empirical descriptions of inter-societal systems to develop “a more general theory” of inter-societal dynamics and formations. A generalized explanatory theory of inter-societal systems requires distilling and supplementing the fundamental properties of geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural dynamics and the inter-societal formations generated by these dynamics. This more scientific approach requires (1) developing models and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_4

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propositions at a higher level of abstraction and (2) emphasizing the generic and fundamental properties of the social universe to explain the wide variety of inter-societal formations over the “long duree” of human societies. Much of what makes WSA interesting is the historical detail and empirical analysis based on a conceptual framework of power-dependent relations that causes a hierarchical system among core, peripheral, and semi-peripheral societies to form. Accordingly, we draw on WSA to help develop general models and inventories of proposition on the dynamics of exchange, cooperation, and conflict leading to patterns of inter-societal formations from the earliest hunting and gathering societies through settled hunter-gathers to simple horticulture through fishing and herding societies to advanced horticulture involving state formations, to simple and advanced agrarian societies, and finally to industrial and post-industrial societies. For many, this approach may seem overly ambitious and, moreover, too general and abstract for explaining inter-societal systems. However, science is more than empirical description and history; it is about discovering the fundamental properties of the universe—and, in our case, the social universe—and then developing models and theoretical propositions on the operative dynamics of this universe. For those who do not believe that a “natural science of society,” in A. R. Radcliffe-Browns’ (1957) famous words, is possible, this book’s contribution is hardly useful or important. For those who adhere to social science, the main objective of this book aligns with the fundamental goal of utilizing theoretical and empirical analysis to formulate generalized explanatory principles that are organized into models delineating the underlying processes that generate the social world (Collins 1989: 124).

4.1 4.1.1

Developing Scientific Explanations of Inter-Societal Systems Fundamental Properties of Inter-Societal Dynamics

In Chap. 1, we identified the fundamental properties of societies1 to begin theorizing on the fundamental dynamics shaping the development of societies and formation of the inter-societal systems. Drawing on contemporary theories of inter-societal systems from WSA and the world society approach,2 we develop models and theoretical propositions on geo-political (Chap. 5), geo-economic (Chap. 6), and geo-cultural dynamics (Chap. 7) to explain the formation of and evolution of inter-societal systems since the beginning of human social organization. Geo-Political dynamics denote patterns of cooperation and conflict between polities of different societies, which produce an array of outcomes including alliances, warfare, 1

As discussed in Chap. 1, the fundamental properties are: (1) social structures, (2) cultural structures, and (3) infrastructures. 2 See McNeely (2012), Krucken and Drori (2009), Meyer and Jepperson (2000), Schofer et al. (2012).

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subordination, and imperial formations in inter-societal systems. Geo-economic dynamics refer to patterns of exchange between corporate actors in different societies which produces an array of outcomes, including (1) mutual interdependencies; (2) exploitation of asymmetrical dependence; and (3) new cultural tools, such as money, new social structures of exchange like horizontal and vertical markets, and new types of infrastructure. Geo-cultural dynamics refers to patterns by which symbolic systems— e.g., information, texts, ideologies, values, and technologies—diffuse from, or are imposed by, actors (religious, political, economic, educational, etc.) of other societies, which lead to a larger cultural formation across multiple societies. It is important to emphasize that there are other dynamics driving the formation of inter-societal systems. However, we contend these dynamics are the most important for explaining pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems. Nonetheless, we acknowledge there is a problem with isolating dynamics. In the complexity of the observed social world (rather than the simplicity of the analytical universe), these dynamics are often mixed together in a potentially large set of configurations. Put simply, geo-economics is often influenced by geo-politics or geo-cultural flows, and vice versa. Geo-politics often leads to geo-economic processes, or cultural movements such as religious crusades or technologies riding the backs of geo-economic or geo-political actions, or both. In the long run with more theoretical and empirical work, subsequent theories should aim to explain these intersections to advance the agenda of creating a generalized scientific explanation of inter-societal dynamics. We offer in this book some of the foundation for developing these more complex explanations, but in this relatively short volume, our goal is to take existing approaches and blend them together into some basic models and principles that, we hope, can serve as a base for more nuanced and complicated theories.

4.1.2

A Typology of Inter-Societal Patterns

The interplay of geo-political, economic, and cultural dynamics within inter-societal systems generates patterns of relations between societies. Accordingly, we begin developing a generalized model of inter-societal systems by classifying these systems based on patterns of relations which have been identified by WSA and other theories of inter-societal systems. Specifically, in Table 4.1, we provide an inventory of the most prominent formations in inter-societal systems throughout the evolutionary history of human societies.3

3

Allport (1947), Boehm (nd), Campbell (2016), Cottrell (1965), Richerson and Boyd (2001), Carneiro (1970), Currie et al. (2020), Davies (1965), Divale (1990), (Diamond (1997), Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1982), Firth (1965), Holloway (1967), Iversen (2017), Linton (1936), Kirch (1984), Leavitt (1977), Marsh (1967), Murdock (1967), Otterbein (1968, 1970, 1971), Price and Brown (1985), Service (1975), Sahlins and Service (1960), Teft and Reinhart (1974), Turner (2002), Abrutyn and Turner (2022).

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Table 4.1 Long-Term Patterns of Inter-Societal Relations 1. Large-scale cooperation in small-scale societies revolving around cooperation among bands in producing collective goods, in sharing investments in local ecologies, trade, alliances, and warfare 2. Exchanges of bulk and prestige goods, often across long distances and via quasi-markets of diverse populations, often initiated by leaders of nomadic hunter-gathers and/or Big Men of settled hunter-gatherers 3. Early bulk and prestige exchanges of goods among kin-based horticultural/herding/or fishing societies, typically organized by kin leaders 4. Early conquest patterns of kin leaders acting as political leaders among horticultural/ herding/or fishing societies leading to extraction of resources by dominant population over subordinated populations 5. Tribute pattern in which dominant polities, backed up by garrisoned coercive force, in advanced horticultural and agrarian societies extract material resources, often in the form of tribute of valued goods or even money and at times slaves, while at the same time, leaving in place most of the institutional systems of and conquered population 6. Conquest pattern in which a coercive force society marches out from its home base, often protected by natural barriers, or marchland advantage (mountains, bodies of water, deserts), extracting resources from defeated societies as taxes or tribute, with more administrative and coercive control by the hegemon of the institutional systems of the conquered societies. Such patterns of conquest give rise to empires that eventually exceed their marchland advantage and capacities to maintain social control 7. Colonial pattern of domination in which marching society defeats another population, extracting resources and sending these back to the home base with varying patterns of administrative control ranging at the extreme to the extinction of the conquered populations or large portions thereof but more likely tight coercive and administrative control of population forcing the export of bulk goods to the home base of the hegemon, while at the same time, engaging in high levels of monitoring and, at times, co-opting key segment of the indigenous population. Often, colonial patterns of domination lead to investments in the infrastructure of subordinated societies and to institutional development, thereby increasing the capacity of the subordinated society to expel, in the long, super-ordinate actors 8. Plantation pattern in which more developed society strategically gains economic and/or political leverage of key actors engaged in resource extraction (through bribery, capital investments, or threats of coercive force), using indigenous actors to organize and control what is often an exploited labor forces extracting resources for export to a hegemon 9. Capitalist patterns of extraction in which economic actors, often backed up by coercive force or threats of coercive force by political actors, use less expensive labor in organizations extracting resources or producing finished products in manufacturing infrastructures owned/ controlled by economic actors of the dominant society or franchised to entrepreneurs in the dominant society. This pattern overlaps with the plantation pattern 10. Joint investments of capital between societies engaged in import–export exchanges in all levels of markets 11. Dominant geo-economic and/or geo-political society co-ops less developed society through aid packages (for infrastructural development), trade agreements, technologies transfers, capital investments in exchanges of natural resources, and strategic alliances in trade and military defense (continued)

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Table 4.1 (continued) 1. Large-scale cooperation in small-scale societies revolving around cooperation among bands in producing collective goods, in sharing investments in local ecologies, trade, alliances, and warfare 12. Economic actors in higher priced-labor markets (1) seek less expensive labor and/or (2) markets for their products in less developed societies, leading to (a) capital investments in extraction, production, and distribution of physical structures employing indigenous labor, (b) infrastructures necessary for (a), and in so doing, also engage in (c) technology transfers to less developed society for use by the polity and economic actors of the less developed society. In the long run, development by indigenous society accelerates, leading to more equalized geo-economic and, potentially, geo-political intersocietal relations

As we have continuously emphasized, it is important to look beyond WSA for other sources of data to create a more complete understanding of the kinds of inter-societal systems that have evolved over the last 400,000 rather than exclusively focusing on the evolution of the contemporary world economy over the last 500 years. For example, Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson (2021) summarize data documenting the large-scale cooperation between small-scale, nomadic hunter-gatherers what can only be described as inter-societal systems.4 Nomadic hunter-gatherers, as well as settled populations of hunter-gathers, have engaged in large-scale hunts involving several bands; shared their resources; collectively improved their local ecologies; and participated in warfare, alliances, and trade. Thus, one of the first inter-societal formations arose from cooperation and conflict among relatively small populations of nomadic and settled hunter-gatherers. Overall, the inventory in Table 4.1 provides a set of ideal types for making sense of the variety and range of inter-societal systems based on the interplay geo-political, geo-economic, and geo-cultural dimensions in the formation of inter-societal systems.5 In subsequent chapters, we extend this theorization by identifying and explaining the dynamics driving geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural formations in inter-societal systems. Based on the inventory of patterns in Table 4.1, it is evident that geo-economic relations and geo-political relations often occur simultaneously, or one follows the initial operation of the other. In the first human societies, the most recent data on hunter-gatherers shows these early societies formed many kinds of relationships with each other, even between populations that did not speak the same language (Peoples et al. 2016; Lewis et al. 2014). Nonetheless, these patterned relations between early human societies were primarily formed around the interplay of geo-political and economic dynamics. Generally, these relations were driven by geo-economic forces, such as cooperative hunting and forging. However, among “Big Man” societies as well as in societies in ecological spaces revealing a high degree circumscription (e.g., Polynesian societies), geo-political dynamics may

4 5

See also Glowacki and Lew-Levy (2022). Typically, one form dominates but over time, the dominance of forms can change.

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have played a more prominent role in forming these early systems. Still, it is more likely that hunting and gathering populations, especially nomadic bands, formed more cooperative than conflictual relations, especially in the early years of human societies since population densities were so low. Cooperation was often necessary to assure than all bands in the earliest inter-societal systems could survive changing ecological conditions with very simple technologies. The development of herding and fishing variants of horticultural technologies amplified geo-political dynamics in early inter-societal systems because economic survival depended upon control of the land near water for fishing, or pastoral land for livestock. As a result, geo-political dynamics of inter-societal conflict, coercion, and domination began to determine relations among societies. The transition to simple horticulture began the evolution toward kinship systems (organized by a descent rule) to become the organizational base of all institutional activity within a society, with positions within the kin system carrying authority and power. And once leadership and authority can organize economic activities, this same basis of power can organize geo-political activities, especially if there are high levels of circumscription, which creates a situation where populations engage in conflict over access to land, or other resources. This expanding need for more land and resources is primarily a function of population growth and the utilization of simple horticultural technologies that are not efficient or ecologically sound in the sense of preserving the fertility of the land. The acquisition of needed land provided the requisite space and resources for these societies to grow their populations and to create more extensive communities with farming plots that, eventually, would increase the degree of circumscription among horticulturalist in an ecological space. Thus, conflict over land became inevitable with high degrees of circumscription. The evolution of human societies with the creation and adoption of more advanced horticultural technologies further increased geo-political activities in inter-societal systems with the formation of “proto-polities.” For example, inter-societal systems in what is present-day Mexico, Central America, and South America initially formed through the development of trade routes. However, geo-political dynamics became more prominent as a particular city-state conquered and consolidated power over neighboring communities, as was the case with the Maya and Aztecs. This was especially the case with the formation of the Incan Empire whose chain of exchange and political control extended along much of the Western coast of South America. Similar systems were also forming in the Middle East, Asia, and Pacific Islands during the Holocene. The emergence of polities in the institutional systems of horticultural societies intensified the interplay of geo-economic and geo-political dynamics into a reciprocal system. The introduction of agriculture, especially using animal power and the plow, among societies amplified these reciprocal effects between geo-political and economic dynamics, thereby generating more complex inter-societal systems. For example, the Achaemenid Empire formed into an inter-societal system between 500 and 400 BC by fusing geo-political (e.g., centralized and bureaucratic administration) and economic formations (e.g., trade infrastructure) into a complex tributary

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system. Similarly, the Roman Empire developed a tributary system from an infusion of geo-political and economic formations. This type of geo-political and economic system became a common among other empires over the next 1500 years. The tributary systems of the Achaemenid and Roman empires facilitated the emergence of Christianity and Islam as religious movements. More specifically, both empires utilized decentralized administrative power to maintain their hegemony where religion, customs, and trade were primarily regulated by the local corporate units. Accordingly, local populations were permitted to practice these religions if taxes were paid, and conflict was minimal. The emergence of these religious movements is important because they signify the development of geo-cultural systems of societies through the diffusion of religious beliefs along trade networks between societies, which were created by developing physical infrastructure (e.g., building road systems), and the utilization of a decentralized administrative base of power. Put simply, the spread of Christianity occurred because of the Roman tributary system and Islam emerged in the Middle East, Western Asia, and North Africa because of the Persian tributary system. Over time, these geo-cultural dynamics were infused with geo-political and economic dynamics through extending networks of trade and the formation of polities that derived their authority from religious doctrine (e.g., Muslim Caliphates and Byzantine Empire). Similarly, in East Asia, other geo-cultural systems based on other religions (e.g., Buddhism) and religious philosophies (e.g., Confucianism) emerged and spread through the tributary systems of the Chinese dynasties. The evolution of inter-societal systems introduced new patterns of geo-political and economic relations. As the polities of societies increasingly sought greater resources from other societies, other strategies for geo-political and economic domination emerged. More specifically, the plantation and colonial strategies of super-ordinate societies in inter-societal systems replaced tributary systems with new geo-political and economic formations. The plantation strategy involves a small set of corporate economic actors that seek specific resources in subordinate societies (e.g., oil, minerals, coffee, and other agricultural products) for export to the home base of dominant societies, with these actors often being sponsored by the polities of and coercive bases of power in these super-ordinate societies. The polities of super-ordinate societies utilized coercive power to facilitate this resource extraction by corporate economic actors who utilized indigenous populations as low-cost labor for cultivating, processing, and exporting resources to super-ordinate societies. For example, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were directly involved in importing slaves from West African populations and forcing indigenous populations to cultivate agricultural products (e.g., sugar cane) and mine precious minerals (e.g., silver) for export to Europe. Over time, the implementation of more sophisticated administrative bases of power created a new system for geo-political and economic domination. The colonial strategy requires a polity to create a coercive-administrative base of power in subordinate societies and to co-opt selected members of the indigenous population into administrative (e.g., local governance) and coercive (e.g., local militia)

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bases of power. This colonial strategy of domination involves substantial investment from super-ordinate societies to build infrastructures, administrative structures, and production and distribution structures, which also leads to greater technology transfers between subordinate and super-ordinate societies. However, at some point, these investments became incentives to the subordinated population to rise up to depose of the colonial power—as occurred successively across the British Empire and elsewhere with virtually all late agrarian and early industrial European colonial powers in Africa, Americans, and Asia. Yet, even as colonial powers were thrown out of these previously subordinate societies, the technology transfers generated new ideologies arising from new modes of production and new dynamic market exchanges that led to an overlay over at least some institutional domains in these now-liberated societies, especially with respect to ideologies and generalized symbolic media of their polities and economies (see Table 1.2 on p. 6). The emergence of capitalism introduced new geo-political and economic strategies that expanded the patterns of inter-societal dynamics. More recently, geo-economic dynamics have become a fundamental driver of inter-societal relations except for societies seeking geo-political domination through coercive and administrative power (e.g., the Soviet Empire). For example, corporate actors and polities in advanced industrial societies increasingly invested in less developed societies to access and utilize inexpensive labor for production and access to valued resources (Silver 2003; Firebaugh 2003). This investment in less developed societies has changed the culture of these societies and created the structural and technological bases for advancing domestic production and distribution for local and global markets. The development of East Asian economies since World War II is prime examples of this new pattern of geo-economic relations. Additionally, the extensive growth of the Mexican, Brazilian, and Chilean economies has been fueled by foreign investment (e.g., UNCTAD 1998, 2006). Generally, new patterns of geo-economic relations among societies emerge with the decline of geo-political domination. For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union induced substantial foreign investment into Eastern European economies which helped to privatize these economies, thereby increasing the productive capacity of emerging firms (Hunya 1997; Bandelj 2008). However, this interplay between geo-economic and political dynamics is not a recent phenomenon. Over a thousand year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Hanseatic League, a commercial confederation of guilds and towns in Central and Northern Europe, emerged after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. The spread of the Hanseatic League across Central and Northern Europe also created a geo-cultural system built around the domination of the Catholicism with its administrative power lodged in the Vatican bureaucracy, and its coercive base in the wealth that could be used to hire mercenaries to suppress political uprisings. Thus, the evolution of human societies over last 400,000 years produced a variety of geo-economic, political, and cultural relations within inter-societal systems. Moreover, since these systems are universal feature of human societies, from hunting and gathering to post-industrialism, the social sciences should aim to develop theoretical models and principles to explain the formation and dynamics of

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inter-societal systems. The fundamental rationale for this book, then, is to present a strategy for building a more general theory of inter-societal systems. Surprisingly, few have adopted a scientific approach to theorize inter-societal systems, although there are exceptions (e.g., Chase-Dunn and Hall 1993; Turner 2010b, 2017). In the previous chapters, we summarized prior approaches and identified important ideas for developing a scientific theory of inter-societal systems. In the coming chapters, we will incorporate these ideas into preliminary theories of geo-political, economic, and cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems. However, we are not inventing a new theory but, instead, developing a strategy for improving current “theoretical” explanation for inter-societal dynamics. Put simply, we attempt to consolidate existing theoretical approaches for scientific explanation, and we encourage others to help finish the “job” of creating a scientific theory of inter-societal dynamics.

4.1.3

A Strategy for Developing Scientific Theories

The strategy for developing a scientific theory of inter-societal dynamics has been on display in the previous chapters. This approach draws on the extensive work of Jonathan Turner, who over the last 50+ years has pursued a consistent approach for developing general theories for sociology.6 Specifically, Turner’s work has been dedicated to realizing the meta-goal of scientific theory: To explain the relations among the generic properties of the social universe. Based on this goal, we start developing a scientific approach in two stages. The first stage is dedicated to specifying causal relations among phenomena. The models in Chaps. 1, 2, and 3 outline the chains of proximate and fundamental causality as well as chains of reciprocal effects by which outcomes feedback and alter the values of the very forces leading to a particular outcome. The social world is complex, dynamic, and always changing, and its dynamics are recursive in this sense: Outcomes exert causal effects on the values and valences of the forces that generated these outcomes, thereby assuring changes in future outcomes. The dynamics of inter-societal systems, then, are extraordinarily complex which requires identifying the direct, indirect, and reversal causal effects of geo-political, economic, and cultural relations between societies that are always operative and, hence, can be theorized.7 The second stage is dedicated to specifying the forces that affect the properties of the social universe. This can be accomplished by developing propositions such as “X is positively (or negatively) associated with Y.” We develop some of

6

Turner (1974, 1984, 1988, 1995, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010a, b, 2012, 2013). The following pages in Chaps. 5, 6, and 7 are illustrations of what we term analytical models that outline the flow of causal effects among the generic properties and forces structuring and driving the social universe. 7

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propositions of this nature, but most of our propositions are, in essence, verbal equations in which we see “the values of property X as a function of a set of conditions (e.g., A, B, C, and D). Thus, we develop propositions like the “likelihood that a geo-political formation will evolve is an additive function of A, B, C, and D.” These propositions can be fairly complex (e.g., Turner 1986, 1995), especially when identifying the functional form, signing valences and weights to parameters in the function, and incorporating multiple functions into a system. What emerges is somewhat simplified propositions than employ the logic of mathematical equations but are stated in words. For example, we can express an outcome (X) as a function of a set of conditions (A, B, C, and D), where X = f (A, B1, B2, C, D). Identifying the most appropriate functional form (e.g., linear, quadratic, logarithmic, or cubic), the appropriate weight for the conditions, and how these operate in a system of functions would require extensive empirical analysis. Nonetheless, we can simply identify the conditions that determine these outcomes and then express them in written propositions. For example, we can express this simplified equation above using the following propositions: 1. The value of X is an additive function of a. Property A of the social universe. b. Property B of the social universe: i. Sub-Property B1, ii. Sub-Property B2. c. Property C of the social universe. d. Property D of the social universe. A good example for what we will do in the next three chapters can be found in Table 3.1 (p. 87) where Randall Collins’ ideas on empire formations were presented, generalizing from his analysis of the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire. The propositions are very much like an equation but stated in ordinary English. The key is the forces in the equation are stated at a high level of abstraction. This is the kind of explanatory theory that we seek to present. Like the proposition in Table 3.1, we aim to develop propositions that account for the full universe of inter-societal systems rather than specific historical inter-societal systems (e.g., the capitalist world economy). Highly abstract propositions can be adopted and modified to explain particularities of specific inter-societal system, which helps advance existing theoretical traditions on inter-societal systems (e.g., dependence theory, world-system analysis, comparative WSA, and world-society theory). Granted, it takes a certain mental discipline to absorb these highly abstract principles, but with some engagement, they become much easier to understand and to produce. Our goal is to explain rather than describe history. Along with the analytical models outlining causal relations and dynamic flows of inter-societal dynamics, formalizing very abstract propositions or theoretical principles is, for us, one useful way of generating scientific explanations.

References

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119

Conclusion

A frequent criticism of practitioners of general theory, especially in a specialized field like WSA, is that they are “intellectual voyeurs” who aim to disrupt and potentially erase an established and accomplished subfield in the name of unified science. This is not our intent. Anthony Roberts is certainly a part of the world-systems legacy, as a student trained by one of its leading theorists, Christopher Chase-Dunn, to whom this book is dedicated. Jonathan Turner has been formalizing sociological theories for six decades including theories of geo-politics and geo-economics, but he is more of a theorist than researcher in any field, including WSA. Still, if sociology seeks to have the prestige and respect of a legitimate scientific discipline, more effort is needed to develop a theory on inter-societal dynamics. More specifically, we need to develop an approach for creating general and abstract models and propositions that build upon the existing corpus of work over the last 50 years of world-system analysis and, in essence, translates this body of work into a more formal and less ideological body of theorizing. Overall, the goal of developing sets of abstract propositions on inter-societal systems is to formalize and generalize key ideas of existing theories on inter-societal systems. The intent is not to “remake” WSA. Rather, we are trying to make it less classificatory; less historical; less empirically tied to one or two cases; and, most significantly, dramatically less ideological. We are not interested in developing a normative ideology, but rather a more abstract and thereby universally applicable set of ideas that can explain the dynamics of past and contemporary inter-societal systems. Such is the goal of this book. We do not present a definitive explanation of inter-societal systems. Instead, we aim to develop a strategy for making inter-societal analysis that is more theoretical and, hence, explanatory in the same sense that theories in all other sciences are explanatory. What we propose does not advocate abandoning current classificatory schema and ceasing empirical analyses based on current schema. We just advocate for more actual theorizing, and more empirical analysis for testing the viability of a theory. As the subtitle of this book emphasizes, we are only advocating for movement “toward a more general theory.” Developing a scientific approach for formulating a general theory of inter-societal systems is important for explaining and predicting the evolution of these systems since the inception of human societies and into the future.

References Abu-Lughod, Janet L. 1989. Before european hegemony. the world system ad 1250–1350. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frank, Andre Gunder, and Barry K. Gills, eds. 1994. The world system: five hundred years or five thousand? New York: Routledge.

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Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Halls. 1993. Comparing World-systems: concepts and working hypotheses. Social Forces 71 (4): 851–886. 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. Collins, Randall. 1989. “Sociology: Proscience or antiscience?.” American Sociological Review 54 (1): 124–139. Radcliffe, A.R. 1957. A natural science of society. New York: Free Press. Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. 2021. Large-scale cooperation in Small-scale societies. https://ecoevorxiv.org/fxwbr/. Peoples, Hervey, Pavel Duda, and Frank W. Marlowe. 2016. Hunter-Gathers and the origins of religion. Human Nature 27: 261–282. Lewis, Hannah M., Lucio Vinicius, Janis Strods, Ruth Mace, and Andre Bamberg Migliano. 2014. High mobility explains demand sharing and enforced cooperation in egalitarian Hunter-gathers. Nature Communications 5789 (5). Silver, Beverly. 2003. Forces of Labor: worker’s movements and globalization since 1870. New York: Cambridge University Press. Firebaugh, Glenn. 2003. The new geography of global income Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 1998. World Investment Report. New York: United Nations. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 2006. World Investment Report. New York: United Nations. Hunya, Gabor. 1997. Large privatisation, restructuring, and foreign direct investment. pp. 275–300 in Zecchini S. (Ed.) Lessons from the Economic Transition. Dordrecht: Springer. Bandelj, Nina. 2008. From communists to foreign Capitalist: the social foundation of foreign direct investment in postsocialist Europe. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Turner, Jonathan H. 1986. “Toward a unified theory of ethnic antagonism: A preliminary synthesis of three macro models.” Sociological Forum, 1(3): 403–427. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2017. Principles of Inter-Societal Dynamics. Journal of World-Systems Research 23(2): 649-677. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1995 Macrodynamics : toward a theory on the organization of human populations New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press. McNeely, Connie L. 2012. World society theory. In Ritzer, George (Ed.) The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog836. Krucken, Georg, and Gilli S. Drori, eds. 2009. World Society: the writing of John W. Meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meyer, John W., and Ronald L. Jepperson. 2000. The “Actors” of modern society: the cultural construction of social agency. Sociological Theory 18 (1): 100–120. Schofer, Evan, Ann Hironaka, David John, and Wesley Longhofer. 2012. Sociological Institutionalism and World Society. Chapter 6 in Amenta, Edwin, Kate Nash, and Alan Scott (Eds.) The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology: https://doi.org/10.1002/ 9781444355093.ch6 Allport, Gordon. 1947. Guidelines for research in international cooperation. Journal of Social Issues 3: 21–37. Boehm, Christopher. N.D. Ancestral “Ambivalence,” Tribal confederations and the evolution of democracy.” Campbell, Shirley. 2016. The ‘Big Men’ of papua new guinea and their west counterpart. www. zegrahm.com/blog/big-men-papua-new-guinea-their-western-couterpart. Cottrell, F. 1965. Technological progress and evolutionary theory.” Pp in Social Change in Developing Areas, H. R. Barringer, G. I. Blankston, and R. W. Rack Eds. Cambridge MA: Schenkman. Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd. 2001. Institutional evolution in the Holocene: The rise of complex societies. The British Academy 110: 197–234.

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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. Currie, Thomas E., Peter Turchin, Edward Turner, and Sergey Gavrilets. 2020. Duration of agriculture and distance from the steppe predict the evolution of large-scales human societies of Afro-Euraia. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7: 34. Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of human societies. New York: W. W. Norton. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Irenaus. 1982. Warfare, man’s indoctrinability, and group selection. Zeitschrift Fur Tierpsychologie 67: 177–188. Firth, Raymond. 1965. Primitive polynesian economy, 2nd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Holloway, Robert L., Jr. 1967. Human Aggression: the need for a Species-specific framework. Natural History 76: 44–48. Krich, P.V. 1984. The evolution of polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Leavitt, Gregory C. 1977. The frequency of warfare: An evolutionary perspective. Sociological Inquiry 47 (1): 49–58. Marsh, Robert M. 1967. Comparative Sociology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. Otterbein, Keith F. 1968. Internal War: A Cross-cultural study”. American Anthropologist 67: 277–289. Otterbein, Keith F. 1970. The evolution of war. New Haven CT: HRAF Press. Otterbein, Keith F. 1971. Comment on correlates of political complexity. American Sociological Review 36: 114–133. Price, Douglas D., and James A. Brown, eds. 1985. Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: The emergence of cultural complexity. Orlando FL: Academic Press. Service, and R. Elvin. 1975. Origins of the state and civilization. New York: Norton. Sahlins, Marshall and Elvin Service. 1960. Evolution and culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Tefft, Stanton K., and Douglas Reinhart. 1974. Warfare Regulation: A Cross-Cultural hypothesis among tribal peoples. Behavior Science Research 19: 151–172. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2002. Face-to-Face: Toward a sociological theory of interpersonal behavior. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. 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. Glowacki, Luke, and Sheina Lew-Levy. 2022. How Small-Scale societies achieve Large-scale cooperation. Current Opinion in Psychology 44: 44–48. Turner, Jonathan. H.1974. The Structure of Sociological Theory. Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1984. Societal Stratification: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1988. A Theory of Social Interaction. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2003. Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution. Boulder CO: Rowman and Littlefield. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2007. Human Emotions: A Sociological Theory. London UK: Routledge. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010a. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 2 on Microdynamics. New York: Springer. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010b. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 on Macrodynamics. New York: Springer. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2012. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 3 on Mesodynamics. New York: Springer. Turner, Jonathan. H.2013. Contemporary Sociological Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Chapter 5

Geo-Political Dynamics

Geo-Political dynamics in inter-societal systems are defined as the use of power by one society to exert control over some or all the institutional systems of another society. This kind of control requires a polity of one society to use its power advantages to control key actors or the entire population of other societies and, thereby, extract resources for its own benefit. Given the broad range of societies that composed pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems, it is important to understand how and why various bases of power are consolidated within human societies. Indeed, for most of human history, the polity did not exist as an institutional domain. In the earliest inter-societal systems of very small-scale nomadic societies and semi-settled societies, interactions between these societies created geo-economic inter-societal systems that were occasionally punctured by geo-political dynamics. Thus, we identify two critical questions for understanding geo-political dynamics in inter-societal systems: (1) How and why did societies evolve from social organizations based on more egalitarian ideologies to social organizations based on the consolidation and increasingly centralized power into the institution of polity? (2) How and why did these societies use this power to control elements of another society? The polity was probably the second institutional sphere to evolve out of kinship in the evolution of human societies (Abrutyn and Turner 2022), and so, we need to understand forces that drove humans to invent polities, and in so doing, change the evolutionary trajectory of human societies and inter-societal systems. The movement toward political formations within early societies was likely an episodic response to crises facing small populations of hunter-gathers over several thousands of years, and with resolution of these crises, leaders possessing authority and power might well have receded once the crisis was resolved. Yet by the Holocene, the polity was clearly becoming a prominent and permanent part of institutional systems in human societies. The prevalence of polities across societies increased the propensity for actors to exercise power to out-compete, conquer, eradicate, or otherwise dominate other relatively underdeveloped societies that did not have a sufficiently evolved a polity to defend their borders. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_5

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The transition toward the institutionalization of the polity was facilitated by the evolution of both simple and more advanced horticultural societies. These early horticultural societies were often built up by a unilineal decent rule that allowed for the organization of larger populations by expanding the complexity of kinship beyond isolated nuclear families. Once populations were more settled into communities tied to land (for gardening, horticulture, and herding) and, at times, land around bodies of water (for fishing), populations began to grow, generating selection pressures for new organizational and cultural structures, as well as new infrastructures, for organizing larger populations. In leaving “Garden of Eden” of nomadic hunting and gathering1 compared to the hard work in and warfare among horticultural societies, selection pressures from a society’s demography, geography, ecology, and neighboring societies pushed for the consolidation and centralization of power to regulate and control members of an expanding population as they faced new kinds of environmental challenges. Typically, authority and power were allocated to kin leaders who would eventually evolve into chiefs and councils of chiefs. And once these evolutionary steps were taken, the polity, which had evolved within a more complex kinship system, began to differentiate out from kinship in advanced horticultural societies, creating a new institutional domain: polities organized by state-like formations and, in some cases, outright state formations.2

5.1

The Evolution of Polity

As noted above, early inter-societal formations among the earliest human societies were centered on the trade of bulk goods using different mediums of exchange in quasi-markets rather than political domination. Yet, it is unlikely these early societies did not come into conflict with each other. The emergence of sustained conflict between societies induced the mobilization and institutionalization of power into leaders who coordinated the violence of one society against another. Often this coordinated violence, especially among early horticultural societies, was highly ritualized tit-for-tat retaliation, where the death of a member in one society would instigate the retaliatory murder of another member in another society. Geo-economic formations and dynamics may have, as noted above, incited early “warfare” when disagreements emerged from disputes over land and the control of horticultural plots or from problems in the exchanges of resources. However, the use of coercive power to occupy the territory of another society, and thereby gain access to the resources of another society or population, was probably rare among 1

Marshall Sahlins portrays hunting and gathering in this way because there was no inequality, nor power of one individual over another, and relatively easy work in most habitats to secure resources necessary for survival. 2 For a detailed analysis of the emergence of unilineal descent and then the evolution of polity, see Chaps. 5 and 6 on the evolution of kinship and Chaps. 7 and 8 on the evolution of polity in Abrutyn and Turner (2022). See also Turner (1972, 1995, 1997, 2003).

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the earliest societies because of the low population densities and low levels of circumscription generating competition for resources. However, this interplay is difficult to assess in the earliest systems because, unlike the evolution of the capitalist world economy over the last 500 years, there is no written history (or even archeology) of these first human societies. Only by studying the structure and culture of pre-literate societies that survived into the modern era can we get some sense for how these “first societies” operated. Anthropological research on hunter-gathers can provide some insight into the emergence of the polity in the distant past (Layton 1986; Flanagan 1989). Based on this research, political activity emerged once hunter-gathering populations settled into semi-sedentary communities, and geo-political activity soon followed, unless a population was isolated by natural barriers. Another source of information on geo-political dynamics in the earliest inter-societal systems is the behavior of humans’ closest relatives, chimpanzees. Groups of male chimpanzees often engage in patrols around their home range to prevent incursion into their territories by males from other populations, which often manifests into deadly conflict (Turner 2021). This violent dynamic between chimpanzee populations, in conjunction with the anthropological evidence on hunter-gatherers, suggests circumscription plays a fundamental role in the emergence of geo-political activity. Put simply, as populations settle into favorable geographic locations, the degree of circumscription increases which often leads to conflict over access to, and consumption of, scarce and valuable resources. Overall, conflict between populations is the quickest route to the beginnings of a polity, but other forces also activate selection pressures for the emergence of political formations. As noted previously, any crises will generate a demand for leadership; and, as the crises persist, leadership can become institutionalized and begin to form a polity. The settlement of hunter-gather societies generated “Big Man” systems in which a charismatic individual and his allies within a settled band would claim authority and some degree of coercive power. A fundamental dynamic driving the emergence of these systems (e.g., in the early populations inhabiting the Melanesia and Polynesian Islands) is population growth, whether it occurs before settling down into community-like structures or after settlement in verdant areas where there are more resources to support a larger population. Settled populations almost always grow, and especially so if they can secure resources, whether through fishing, horticulture, or herding. And as outlined by Herbert Spencer’s first principle (1874): differentiation of new institutional domains is a positive function of population growth. Such growth immediately generates selection pressures to differentiate a polity; and once polity exists, a population now has the institutional system that will inevitably activate geo-political dynamics. As many analysts of state formation have noted in following Spencer (e.g., Carneiro 1970, 2012), population growth generates selection pressures for coordination and control (what Spencer called regulation) that leads to the consolidation and centralization of bases of power. Additionally, as emphasized by Spencer, the consolidation and centralization of bases of power in a society leads to changes in the culture and ideologies of these societies by increasing the need to find a

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symbolic means to legitimate rather than condemn inequalities in the distribution of resources, including power and authority. And so, once bases of power begin to evolve, the evolution of polity accelerates.

5.1.1

Consolidating Bases of Power

The evolution of the polity that will generate geo-political dynamics in inter-societal systems is predicated on the consolidation and centralization of power. Here, power refers to the capacity of one actor or set of actors to direct the behaviors of other actors (Turner 2004: 232). At the macro level of social organization, there are four basic bases of power that are first consolidated and then centralized into distinctly political actors (Turner 1995, 1998, 2003): (1) coercive, (2) administrative, (3) symbolic, and (4) incentive (Turner 2003, 2010a). Each of these is briefly discussed below. The Coercive Base of Power. Coercive power is the capacity to physically force to get others to follow the directives. Frequently, only the threat of exerting coercive force is enough to cause others to follow directives. However, all systems of power are ultimately based on the capacity for coercion. Thus, the dynamics of power are related to the degree of coercive power possessed by actors and their willingness to use coercion, if needed. Ironically, the over-use of coercion weakens in the long run a polity’s capacity to rule and govern because it inevitably generates counter-anger and aggressive efforts to mobilize counter-coercive power. To paraphrase Edmund Burke: “people cannot be ruled if they must be perpetually conquered”; and this statement captures the dilemma of all leaders of polity and, especially, polities engaged in geo-political expansion into an inter-societal system based upon coercion and domination. The Administrative Base of Power. Administrative power is the capacity to use of organizational systems to issues directives while monitoring and enforcing conformity to these directives. The constant use of power requires will require an administrative base, especially as the scale and complexity of directives increases in societies. Large populations require a set of administrative corporate units to translate directives of leaders into requirements, monitor the level of conformity to directions, and issue both positive and negative sanctions for either conformity or non-conformity to directives. For example, the Big Man in settled hunter-gatherers societies utilized a cadre of allies who helped him exercise power and who were, in essence, the Big Man’s administrative base of power. In horticultural societies that evolved after settled hunter-gathering societies, the society was built up from layers of kinships units linking nuclear families, first into lineages of several nuclear families. Then, lineages would be linked together in sub-clans linked together into different clans, sometimes creating phratries sharing a mythical ancestor. And finally in some societies, clans would be split into one of two moieties that divide the population into two parallel layers of hierarchy. Such a kinship structure would look very much like the organization “chart” of a bureaucracy and operated in

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pretty much the same way to provide an effective administrative base of power centered around hierarchies of authority at each level of kinship organization. The emergence of state formations involved creating an administrative base of power outside the kinship and increasingly in early quasi-and eventually full-bureaucratic administrative systems. Until the capacity to build more rational–legal bureaucracies evolves, polity in societies will be limited, but unilineal descent rules did provide the capacity to organize a coherent polity that could control comparatively large populations in the thousands rather than hundreds. The Incentive Base of Power. Incentive-based power is the capacity to use of material or symbolic rewards and sanctions for compliance or non-compliance to directives by those with power. The capacity to administer directives and monitor conformity requires providing incentives to subordinate actors. Providing rewards —whether material or symbolic—for conformity to directives mitigates the negative emotions that arise with subordination, particularly from the coercive and administrative bases of power. For example, the Big Man in settled hunter-gather societies not only collected resources from his subjects but he also was obligated to redistribute these resources back to them. This was often done through rituals that added a symbolic layer to incentives by creating a “celebration” of people giving up resources, only to get them back as a “gift” from the prestigious leader. In more complex polities, incentives take many forms and are the key to ensuring that individuals and corporate units comply to the directive orders of authoritative leaders. The Symbolic Base of Power. Symbolic power is the capacity to use and manipulate of symbols and their organization into idea systems, or ideologies, that carry moral overtones and thereby give directives by those with power “moral authority.” And the greater is their moral authority, the more “legitimate” will a polity’s use of power appear, thereby reducing reliance on coercion and even administrative over-sight. Polities always seek to mobilize a symbolic base of power through many mechanisms, such as flags symbolizing a population or polity, ceremonial centers and even buildings, festivals, and celebrations of polity, and affiliations with the gods and other supernatural forces. Such symbolic acts can add a sense of “awe” to moral authority; and in so doing, polity is given the right to have and exercise power. Indeed, the more symbols that a polity has at its disposal —as totems, ideologies, and cultural texts—the greater will be its powers, and the less will it need to rely on other forms of power (especially coercive power).

5.1.2

Centralizing Bases of Power

The use of power by authorities depends on the degrees of consolidation of the coercive, administrative, incentive, or symbolic bases of power to issue, monitor, and enforce directives. Polities use these bases of power in different mixes, with the most important differences being the extent to which they rely on (1) the coercive-administrative bases of power or (2) the incentive-symbolic bases. All

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systems of power use all four bases, but it is the relative amounts of these bases that make a difference in how power-use affects the organization of a society and geo-political dynamics in inter-societal systems. The other relevant dimension of power use is the degree to which it is centralized into a small number of individuals and corporate units that can use power, as opposed to dispersed across many layers and loci of power users. Table 4.1 (Page 112) described varying types of power-use by decentralized systems of power compared to more centralized systems of power. As with the case with individual societies, inter-societal systems are also very much affected by the degree of centralization in the bases of power across societies. When power is concentrated in the coercive-administrative base, it tends to rely upon directives that are backed up by monitoring conformity and use of coercive sanctions for non-compliance. In contrast, when power relies on symbols and incentives, with coercion only used as the ultimate backup, and/or when the administrative base is used to diffuse symbols and incentives rather than directives, then power is less centralized, thereby allowing more freedom and alternative ways for individuals and corporate units to operate. Similarly, geo-political strategies will vary in terms of the pattern on consolidating the four bases of power and the relative degree of centralized (or decentralized) use of power in inter-societal system.

5.1.3

Bases of Power in Geo-Political Dynamics

The strategy that a society employs to dominate another society or societies in an inter-societal system is often determined by how it operates in its home base. For example, societies with highly centralized power bases that rely on coercion and tight administrative control will often employ a similar strategy in geo-political relations with other societies. Conversely, societies that subordinate the coercive base power to the administrative, incentive, and symbolic bases, will employ a different set of strategies for sustaining control and domination in an inter-societal system. And so, these strategies of super-ordinate societies in inter-societal systems will often, but not always, reflect or mirror the internal dynamics of power of hegemonic power. Historically, population growth was the primary force behind the consolidation of power because these demographic shifts led human societies to be organized around new kinds of corporate units: (1) community organizing positions in corporate units in ecological space and (2) unilineal descent rules linking several layers of kin-groups into early form of kin-based organizations. Prior to settled hunter-gatherers in Big Man societies, human organization was organized by nuclear families in bands at only the group level. Once populations settled into communities, population began to grow change dramatically the ecology—both social and biotic—to which humans had to adapt. This change in ecology would generate selection pressures around at least the four key nodes outlined by Spencer (see pp. 64–72). Specifically, the level of production had to increase, as did the way

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in which resources, persons, and information were distributed across larger ecological space, dotted with communities. Similarly, there were increased pressures on reproduction or replicating the growing number of members of a society, and the more diverse range of corporate units—groups, communities, and organizations (structured by unilineal descent rules) organizing the activities of members in a society. Over time, as populations settled and grew, the degree of circumscription would increase. The settlement of human populations into an area would frequently change the social and biological ecologies of populations already settled in a territory. Circumscription would eventually create a sense of threat by at least some settled populations that would lead to mobilizing coercive forces of emerging polities which, in turn, would increase the likelihood of geo-political mobilization as the sense of threat increased over time. Selection pressures for increased production led to the use of new technologies (e.g., knowledge of horticulture).3 Nomadic hunter-gatherers would often scatter seeds (collected from plants that they consumed) when leaving a site in their annual movement among sites, with the hope and expectation that “easy gathering” would greet them up their return. Thus, some hunter-gatherers possessed the technology of horticulture; and it may have been the case that some hunter-gatherers would settle for a while to practice gardening but then return to hunting and gathering because it involves much less labor and work. Overall, hunter-gathers experienced low levels of selection pressures to form polities or to use new technologies to produce a surplus of resources. But settling into communities as a new form of corporate unit would change everything for a population, and as more populations did so, both geo-economic and geo-political dynamics would begin to escalate. The increase in periodic to more permanent settlement of hunter-gatherers marked the beginning of the polity with the development of unilineal kinship or Big Man systems. Some of these populations began to evolve into chiefdoms (initially granting kin leaders power and, eventually, leaders outside of kinship). And the development of the polity induced the formation of a coercive base of power that would, almost automatically, increased the likelihood of geo-political activity between societies. And as new levels of technology were developed and implemented, new modes of production, distribution in markets, and greater economic surpluses furthered the institutional development of the polity. The expansion of populations in settled societies and growing demand for resources increased perceptions of threat from circumscription in a given area. Accordingly, the institutional consolidation of the polity in settled populations and the growing perceptions of threat from circumscriptions among further increased the likelihood of geo-political activity (Carneiro 1970), and the more threat perceived (whether

3

Early contact with hunting and gathering populations by western explorers and eventually anthropologists often led these westerners to ask why hunter-gatherers did not take up gardening, with a common reply that it is “too much work”.

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accurate or not), the more likely would power become consolidated and centralized, thus increasing the likelihood of geo-political confrontations. However, the administrative base of power in these early horticultural societies still resided in the unilineal kinship structure, thereby limiting the organizational basis of the emerging polity. The organization of unilineal kinship systems resembled the organization of modern-day bureaucracy except these systems were built around hierarchies of kindred. These “kin bureaucracies” became the first administrative base of power, beyond the loose organization of “followers” of the Big Man among settled hunter-gatherers. And so, as kinship ideologies began to operate as a symbolic base of power, giving some kin leaders rights to possess and use authority, the emerging polity could begin to move out and confront neighboring populations. Moreover, as production, market distribution, surplus wealth, and use of money increased, societies would begin to develop infrastructure (e.g., paths, designated plots of gardening, perhaps grazing sites for livestock, and even defensive barriers marking territory). This physical infrastructure was utilized to facilitate trade between societies and could also be used for incursions into the communities of neighboring populations. Ecological factors also mattered for the emergence of geo-political activities. For example, large island-like extensions from a mainland or real islands with several populations, such as was the case in New Guinea and the Hawaiian Islands, or any geography that increased circumscription would have been ripe for early geo-political incursions, warfare, and domination by one population in an inter-societal system created by the better organized society. Larger land masses where circumscription was less had more geo-economic than geo-political relations with other societies, at least until circumscription began to increase as the world’s population began to grow in the run up to the Holocene. And then, during the Holocene, inter-societal dynamics began to increase dramatically. Societies in conflict or potential conflict will inevitably consolidate and centralize power, first within kinship and then, outside kinship in a more autonomous polity. And once this separation of kinship from polity begins, new dynamics in the institutionalization of polity began move societies toward further centralization of power in a now more autonomous state-formation, which would dramatically increase the potential for the evolution of geo-political inter-societal systems.

5.1.4

A Model of Power Consolidation and Centralization

The above scenario corresponds to evolutionary and historical accounts of political power in societies. The dynamics occurring in pre-state societies are very much the same as in state-based societies. However, the scale and pace in the evolution of polities and the propensity to engage in geo-political activity varied in magnitude across pre-modern and modern societies, which is one of the reasons that polity emerged late to human societies and took a great deal of time to evolve into state-formations.

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The Evolution of the State. In the evolution of polity, a qualitative change occurred in the transition from kin-based patterns of social organization to the increasing differentiation of the polity as an autonomous institution, except for the hereditary leaders of the polity who often remained at the head of the emerging state-based form of political organization. The evolution of the state formations concentrated the coercive and administrative bases of power into a more bureaucratic form of organization, and in so doing, it consolidated more coercive and administrative power that, if needed or desired, could be more readily mobilized for geo-political activity. The differentiation of the polity into a state was also accompanied by the increasing differentiation of economy, religion, and law as distinctive institutional domains. Interestingly, religious beliefs were often used as the basis of an ideology forming the symbolic base of power for legitimating the leaders of the state and permitting religious leaders to gain wealth and considerable influence over political leaders. For example, in early state formations, like those that emerged among the caliphates of the Muslim Empire and Christian monarchies of Western and Eastern Europe, political and religious functionaries were often located in the same “palace complexes.” This was also the case in meso-American state-based polities of the Aztecs and Mayans. States can evolve only when the economy is more productive and when markets can generate economic surplus that, in turn, can support incumbents in the administrative and coercive branches of the state. States can evolve more rapidly when markets use money as the medium of exchange, thereby allowing easy taxation to support both administrative and military/police branches of the polity. Thus, geo-political activity will increase with the evolution of state-forms of polity, supported by levels of production and distribution that generate wealth and incomes that can be taxed to support the coercive-administrative bases of power and by religious ideologies that often provide the symbolic base of power. For example, Tilly (1994) argued that the emergence of the modern nation-state and interstate systems was based on the integration of coercive and economic power between 1000 and 1800. Specifically, the increasing scale and scope of warfare, coupled with more advanced military technology and the logistical burdens of sustained campaigns, forced polities to seek resources from economic actors in urban centers. Over the next 800 years, this relationship between the polity and economic actors in urban centers facilitated the rise of the modern nation-state (Arrighi 1994; Kentor 2000). However, this power dynamic has operated before the emergence of the modern nation-state. More generally, the capacity of a polity to move out from its home base is tied to the continued capacity to tax and legitimate such taxation in the name of territorial expansion, where presumably, polity can extract resources to sustain a geo-political formation and spread as patronage to elites and even regular members of the home base of a geo-political formation. When such is not the case, then a geo-political system may collapse or be over-run by other marching geo-political actors. Internal Stratification and Geo-Political Action. Another important property of societies engaged in geo-political activity is the level of inequality in the distribution of resources to members of a population and the resulting stratification

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system. Inequalities in kin-based societies are not as great as in societies where economy, religion, and polity are differentiating out of kinship, thereby initiating the de-evolution of unilineal kin systems from layers of kin based corporate units organizing all members of society back to the isolated nuclear family organizing only one nuclear family rather than all families. Thus, while inequalities exist in unilineal kinship systems, distinctive social classes begin to emerge as unilineal kinship systems are replaced by a non-kin state. These class systems are based on the amount of money, prestige, and authority individuals and families have and, moreover, differential distributions of valued resources to categories of persons, thereby making categoric-unit memberships an additional bases of stratification alongside and intermingled with social classes. Ethnic and religious differences are among the most frequent markers of categoric units (along with sex/gender and age which also evaluated differentially), with evaluations of these categories becoming focal points of the stratification system. And, of course, if a polity engages in geo-political activity, additional categories persons become the basis of stratifying individuals and families across the inter-societal system. Stratification affects the state’s ability to engage in geo-political activity, in two fundamental ways. The first is that stratification serves as an inducement for polity to engage in geo-political activity to increase the prestige of state leaders and, in so doing, to mute (it is hoped) the tensions arising from high levels of inequality and the potential for internal revolts by lower class members and other devalued categoric-unit members (see Fig. 1.2 on p. 9). Leaders of polities have used this strategy if there has been stratification; and it has often successful, at least in the short term, and especially so if resources brought back to the home base of a society improve the fortunes of the less positively evaluated in the stratification system. Thus, the more a polity experiences internal threats along with perceived or manufactured external threats from other societies, the more likely is a state to mobilize for warfare or other forms of geo-political activity that can increase the prestige and wealth of elites, political leaders, and even a broader base of the population. However, if polity is to engage in geo-political activity expending resources that it does not have or cannot collect via existing tax formulas, then it must borrow the resources necessary to engage in such activity, thereby indebting itself to other actors who will put pressure on leaders of the state. Thus, if geo-political activity is not successful or is less lucrative than anticipated, these political leaders can find themselves facing increased discontent from members in both the higher and lower locations in the stratification system. The second inducement of geo-political activity is not so much a reaction to rising discontent within the home base of a potential hegemon, but instead, a perception that the resources of other societies can be extracted to enhance the wealth of leaders of the state and their efforts to maintain their hold on all bases of power—coercive, administrative, incentive, and cultural. Whether the resources come from tribute or actual extraction of resources that increase economic production and wealth, states have often weighed the costs against the benefits of geo-political actions. These calculations can, of course, be wrong, thus leading to

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the erosion of the symbolic base of power. Thus, just how geo-political actions begin, and end, is often very much related to systems of stratification of would-be hegemons. And even if a hegemon is initially successful, longer-term consequences can begin to work against the legitimacy of the polity controlling a geo-political inter-societal system. The various dynasties of China, the erosion of the Mongolian empire (the largest ever), the collapse of the Soviet Empire as well as the British, Dutch, and even the Roman (the longest lasting) empires all signal that, at some point, a geo-political formation falls apart and de-evolves back to its home base. And it is often the effects of tensions over the flow of resources from territories back to the home base that begins this process of de-legitimation of the polity at its home base for the “failure” to sustain the flow of resources. Thus, inter-societal stratification, whether from geo-politics and, as we will see, geo-economics can cause a society to make political and/or economic incursions on other societies to increase the flow of resources back to the home base. In fact, the internal stratification system of a would-be hegemon can push polity to do so, but in the end, this strategy fails because of mounting resentments within the home base population as well as the populations of dominated societies. Figure 5.1 presents the key forces increasing the consolidation and centralization of power as they affect the likelihood of geo-political action by a society. The key relationships are highlighted with the thicker lines and arrows in the figure, with the signs indicating the nature of the relationship among forces. As production and market exchanges increase (compared to pre-state production and markets), they increase the level of inequality, with the overall level of inequality declining in most contemporary societies. Hence, the +/− sign in the model that indicates a positive effect (increasing stratification) that eventually levels off or even declines (the equal sign, or if declines occur, then the minus sign). Inequality can initially increase, as it did historically up to and through the agrarian era (Lenski 1964), and then, with more industrialization and post-industrialization, the level of inequality declined somewhat. It is during the run up in stratification through the agrarian era that it begins to have negative effects on the consolidation of power and its use in geo-political actions. At first, there is little or no effect on polity, and early warnings about the discontent to stratification even encouraging polity to engage in geo-political action in order to increase the prestige for the state and even increase the flow of resources back to the home base to quell rising discontent. But eventually, this lagged effect negative effect (=/−) kicks in with the increase creating a real threat of revolt. New ideologies that erode the symbolic base of power, question the incentive system, if any, question the administrative base of power, and even question the ability of the coercive base to be effective in mobilizing diverse segments of a population. The relationships in the model are non-linear. Threat often bolsters, at least initially, the symbolic base of power as leaders mounts ideological campaigns, especially to justify geo-political actions that are trumpeted as making things better for the disadvantaged (and even more so for the advantaged). But, as inequality increases and the threat becomes overwhelming in the danger that it poses for

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Fig. 5.1 Consolidation and centralization of power and geo-political action

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134 5 Geo-Political Dynamics

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polity, the curvilinear effects all turn negative, eroding the symbolic base of power, which undermines all of the other bases of power. And, with revolt becoming ever more likely, the relative coercive base of power is undermined, as is the administrative base. And the positive arrow to the likelihood of geo-political engagement now turns negative, decreasing the capacity of further geo-political action and, often setting of retreat from geo-political engagements and control of territories remote from the society’s home base. And once this cycle of geo-political engagement and then retreat unfolds, the symbolic base of power to is further eroded, as are all of the other bases of power. If revolt occurs, the entire polity may collapse and become vulnerable to invasion by another marching society. Ironically, state formation, which consolidates and centralizes power, tends to create the conditions for its very undoing. Specifically, if it allows for too much stratification and resentment to build up within a society and if it squanders resources in geo-political actions, especially if they turn sour, when they could have been used to improve the lot of the disadvantaged in the stratification system. Most geo-political formations do not last for extended periods for this very reason, but the longevity of one of the largest empires ever created, The Roman Empire, attests to the fact that the strategy of domination can have large effects on how long an empire can last, at least through the agrarian era. In the industrial and post-industrial era, large-scale empires like the Soviet Empire tend not to last for very long, for a variety of reasons that we will theorize, including the logistics and costs of controlling large populations spread across very large expanse of land or populations scattered across oceans. Not only logistical problems but the costs of maintaining standing troops far from their home base are costly; and if a hegemon cannot deploy a large enough coercive force, either because its home population is too small (as was the case for the Dutch and even British empires) or because of the costs and logistical problems of mounting coercive and administrative forces far from the home base. Even though modern military technologies allow for the rapid movement of military forces and war machines, the costs of deploying a high technology—both in human and monetary numbers—are enormous and cannot be sustained by any polity for a long period of time in the contemporary world. However, as we will argue, these logistical and fiscal limitations on what is possible may not decrease geo-political actions, per se, just any effort to dominate societies far from a home base using coercive power. Still, if coercion is used to control neighboring populations, costs decline, and extraction of resources may more than compensate for the costs of coercive strategies. Geo-Political inter-societal systems may not be gone, but instead, they may be more local and regional, although such polarization in the political realm would inevitably have large consequences for the structure of the current system of world capitalism. We are now able to offer some theoretical propositions incorporating how the evolution of polity, per se, increases geo-political activity and how the eventually evolution of state-based polities accelerates and extends the reach of geo-political

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formations. The propositions4 listed in Table 5.1 list the key conditions increasing the likelihood that a society will mobilize for conflict with neighboring societies; and often, several societies may simultaneously reach this point, seeing each other as a potential threat. Just whether political conflict is initiated depends upon other factors: (1) the degree to which geo-economic considerations outweigh geo-political factors and (2) the assessment of the relative military power of a society relative to potential adversaries.

5.2

Expansion Through Warfare: The Intersection of Geo-Economic and Geo-Political Dynamics

The existing geo-economic relations among societies will generally weigh into considerations of whether it is wise or possible to initiate warfare. If there are unfavorable geo-economic relations, then warfare may indeed occur, but the other considerations to be examined below feed into the assessment that a would-be political hegemon. Most paramount is an answer to the question: Do we have sufficient power vis-à-vis potential adversaries to win a war? Perceptions and calculations can, of course, be wrong and even blinded by ideological mobilization of political leaders and the population but, even with these distortions, mobilizing for warfare is expensive and puts political leaders in a difficult position, even if they do not explicitly acknowledge the potential problems. To be successful in war, especially if supported by most segments of a population through ideological manipulation by polity will bring prestige and potential spoils of resources extracted from the defeated. But to lose a war will likely de-legitimate leaders (Weber 1922; Skocpol 1979), unless they can ideologically manipulate the population to explain the defeat—a difficult task, especially if political leaders were fearful of internal revolts from segments of the population that had been victims of discrimination or denied access to resources. And the task is even more difficult if the deprived in a society are the majority of the population. In addition to these considerations, political leaders almost always under-estimate the logistical problems and costs of social control across an inter-societal system, especially if social control is to be achieved by heavy doses of coercion and administrative monitoring and punishment for those would resist coercive control. Initially, coercion tends to work but, over time, resistance can mount and undermine control, or make it increasingly expensive for a hegemon. Since societies operating under conditions of relatively high circumscription are likely to have had both political and economic relations with each other in their respective histories, existing geo-economic relations with potential adversaries can

4

The propositions can be summarized with the following: Geo-Political Action = (1–A) + (1– B) + (1–C) + (1–D), etc.

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Table 5.1 Propositions on geo-political action in inter-societal systems 1. The potential that a society will engage in geo-political actions against other societies through conflict and incursion of territory is a positive and additive function of: A The capacity and motivation of leaders in this society to consolidate and centralize the four bases of power into an autonomous political institutional domain vis-à-vis other institutional domains, which in turn is an additive function of: 1. The absolute size and rate of growth of a population 2. The productive capacity of the economy 3. The level of market distribution using money 4. The level of surplus wealth created by productive and distributive activities 5. The efficiency of the tax collection system of this wealth for creating: a. coercive forces freed from economic activity b. administrative structures to regulate and monitor all institutional activities in a society c. systems of incentives for paying taxes and for supporting the leadership of the polity d. ideologies legitimating the actions of corporate units organizing coercive and administrative bases of power B The degree of perceived external threat among leaders of polity and the general populations from other societies, which, in turn, is an additive function of: 1. The degree of circumscription of a society by other societies, with the perception of circumscription increasing with: a. the number of neighboring societies b. the proximity of neighboring societies c. the lack of natural barriers between neighboring societies and the threatened society 2. The level of political mobilization of among neighboring societies 3. The rate and frequency of past conflict with neighboring societies 4. The level of economic competition, now or in the past, with surrounding societies 5. The divergence in cultures of neighboring societies from that of the threatened society, especially with respect to ideologies legitimating polity, economy, and religion 6. The divergence between the respective demography of neighboring societies, especially with respect to ethnicity and religious affiliation C The perception by political actors in a society of internal threats stemming from inequalities in the distribution of resources and the resentments of subpopulations in response to these inequalities, which is a positive and multiplicative function of: 1. The level of inequality in the distribution of resources 2. The level of class formation among distinctive classes 3. The consolidation of these class formations with distinctive ethnic and religious subpopulations who experience persistent discrimination 4. The relative size differences between elite and affluent segments of the population, on the one side, and those in classes receiving fewer resources and those subject to discrimination, on the other side 5. The level of consolidation of devalued categorical units with incumbency in lower class locations in the system of stratification 6. The linearity in inequalities of resources and class formations 7. The degree of inequality between upper and lower classes 8. The rigidity of barriers and boundaries in the class system limiting opportunities for upward mobility 9. The rates of conflict, now or in the past, among members of different classes and categorical units (continued)

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Table 5.1 (continued) D The degree to which power can become centralized around it coercive and administrative bases, which, in turn, is a multiplicative function of: 1. The perception, whether real or not, that economic, political, and/or religious actors in neighboring societies have become an increasing threat, which, in turn, is a multiplicative function of: a. perceptions of increasing economic competition with neighboring societies b. perceptions of increasing political/military competition with, and coercive build-ups of, neighboring societies c. perceptions of cultural differences, especially over religious ideologies but other ideologies as well, with neighboring societies is a negative function of the extent to which E The capacity, now and in the past, to successfully consolidate power in the symbolic base of power and, thereby, to legitimate the actions of polity, which is a negative function of the degree to which the symbolic base of power has focused on legitimating open markets, incentives as a source of power-use, and ideologies of individualism and self-interest

work against geo-political activity. The model in Fig. 5.2 outlines some of the forces that will affect how much geo-economics vs. geo-politics will prevail. Figure 5.2 models the forces increasing the scale of geo-economic inter-societal system across the top of the figure. The forces affecting the propensity to consolidate and centralize power that increase the scale of a geo-political system (e.g., size of territory and number of societies) are arrayed across the bottom of the figure. Geo-Political inter-societal systems are, in general, less common in low technology societies because for these societies—e.g., hunting and gathering, settled hunter-gatherers, and simple horticultural societies—the consolidation of high levels of coercive and administrative power is difficult to achieve, although well-established larger unilineal kin systems in horticultural societies achieve considerable administrative control and ability to mobilize a coercive force, but the weaponry involved is still simple and the total number of individuals that can participate in warfare is small, as is the number that could be involved in the larger territories of conquered populations. Mesoamerica did, of course, have geo-political inter-societal formations as the size of the core societies grew and were able to march out and subdue smaller populations. These societies also developed geo-economic interdependences (especially the Inca, but they were still predominately geo-political formations). Still, even among the Wintu of Northern California (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1993), settled hunter-gatherers in small communities without Big-Men as centers of centralized power had “a leader” willing to push for incursions by establishing a community within the traditional territory of neighboring population. However, this was primarily done by arranging marriages between the families of the leaders to make the incursion appear safer and more legitimate since the two leaders were now connected by a kinship tie. Political incursion certainly must have occurred over a several hundred-thousand-years of hunting-gathering, but still much more likely, were

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Fig. 5.2 Forces operating to form geo-economic and geo-political formations

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simple geo-economic systems where bulk and prestige goods were exchanged across successive markets. Some geo-economic systems like that of the Wintu and their neighbors had the equivalent of money in values attached to bundles of seashells, much like the Chumash several hundred miles to the south, whose currency was used from San Louis Obispo to what is now the Mexican and Arizona borders in southern California. The message of the top part of the figure is that if geo-economic systems are installed before geo-politics and, moreover, if such systems reveal high rates of exchange across larger territories and multiple populations, these conditions work against geo-political formations revolving around high levels of concentrated of power in coercive and administrative branches of polity. If, however, inequalities with a society and if circumscription of a society is high, internal fears of revolt from disadvantaged classes and fears of neighboring societies can drive a polity to mobilize coercive and administrative bases of power for conflict. Many of these forces that increase fear and drive the consolidation and centralization of power are, as is evident in the model, lagged responses (as signaled by the =/+) on the arrows. That is, they must reach high values before they begin to have effects on the consolidation of power. And, as they play out, they work against a purely geo-economic inter-societal system. These generalizations still hold for much larger populations with higher levels of technology, wealth, infrastructure, and market activities, but as polity naturally grows and consolidates under selection pressures working on larger populations, the conditions are created for state formations to evolve. A state-based form of state polity can more readily move rapidly into a more militaristic direction in its formation and, even with a large scale geo-economic system in place, engage in geo-political actions, if it perceives that it can win wars and thereby take advantage of economic exchanges to their benefit. Much depends upon the relative size of populations, relative wealth, relative production, relative size and dynamism of market activities, and most importantly, and potential coalitions against a would-be hegemon. It is more likely that a society will engage in warfare with neighbors if these neighbors have resources that are needed and if, compared to the would-be hegemon, are smaller societies, less well organized politically, or vulnerable without the ability to easily form coalitions with other societies. Historically, much smaller societies have often been able to win wars and create geo-political inter-societal systems because they have attacked larger, even more advanced, societies because they were, as Peter Turchin and coauthors have argued (see Sect. 3.2.1), in a downward phase after a “stagnation phase” in cyclical phase of expansion–contraction. The work of Ibn Khaldun (Sect. 3.1.2) made these cases, and indeed the largest empire ever created on earth was that of the Mongols, a small set of populations compared to those that they conquered, but they had several key advantages. First, they were often confronting older settled populations that were past the expansion and dynamic phase in their development and, hence, were vulnerable because of inequalities, corruption, and failing polities. Second, the Mongols had high levels of solidarity at the societal level and even more in fighting units. Third, the Mongols were willing to engage in invasions in which mass killings of conquered population would occur. And fourth, and most important, the Mongols

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had new military technologies revolving around the use of horses, with new forms of bridles and saddles and, later, with horse-driven chariots, all of which allowed them to sweep into a society and conquer ponderous regiments of foot soldiers. Thus, calculations of relative size of forces can be discounted if a population has other advantages and is attacking older societies lacking high levels of integration. Thus, the model simply lays out the forces in play, but at this abstract level, it is difficult to theorize without more information of how the variables in the model load up political calculations for a given configuration of societies engaged in exchange and, potentially, political conflict. If the conditions listed earlier in Table 5.1 with Proposition 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, and 1-D prevail, then political incursions become more likely, but if an existing and larger scale geo-economic system has been operating in the absence of extensive geo-political dynamics, then the likelihood declines. Still, if a would-be hegemon is under internal threats from its own population and experiences threats from other societies, for either economic or political reasons, the polity of this society, especially if it has evolved to a state-level formation, may seize an opportunity to engage in warfare and, thereby, seek to control other populations through the use of its coercive-administrative bases of power and, and thus force an existing geo-economic system to operate in its favor. Even if only by imposing a tribute system as opposed to seeking to control of daily economic and political activity, this marching population can gain advantage over a system of local societies, as was done in Mesoamerica, early Middle East agrarian societies, and throughout Asia during the advanced horticultural and agrarian eras of their history. Proposition 2 in Table 5.2 seeks to collate these various contingencies of what works against and in favor of a polity marching on its neighbors. Even if all these conditions are in place, so much revolves around perceptions; and these can be distorted. And, as noted earlier, loss of a war usually erodes the symbolic base of a polity’s power and leads to loss of economic resources to other societies—leading to not only cultural decline but also economic and political decline among losers in warfare. Yet, perceptions, even when seemingly well thought out, are often wrong as many would-be hegemons have discovered throughout the history of human societies. At other times, as was the case with the Mongols, their perceptions were more accurate, although they were not universally successful, especially in early attacks, but they soon learned that their technologies and military strategies were superior to most enemies. Yet, despite the enormous size of this empire, the Mongols were not universally successful. They did not initially defeat the army sent out by Egypt, and then much later, they were held off again near the end of their string of successes in geo-political actions. In the end, the inability to conquer and occupy Egypt kept them from Africa, at a time when their empire extended from the east side of the Mediterranean to China. By the end, the size differential between the Mongols and the populations that they held began to work against longer-term occupation; and so, despite their superiority in military technologies, they were limited by the demographics of Mongolian populations. Moreover, many of the innovations in horse-based military forces could by the end of the dominance of the Mongols could be copied and used against them, often the fate of a military-based hegemon.

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Table 5.2 Propositions on the likelihood of geo-political warfare and conquest 1. The likelihood that one polity will initiate territorial expansion through warfare and conquest on neighboring societies is a positive and additive function of: A The lack of an existing geo-economic intersocietal or, at least, an enduring large-scale geo-economic inter-societal system B The conditions listed under 1-A through 1-D in Table 5.1 C Perceptions by actors in polity, especially state-based polities, of having greater coercive capacity than neighboring societies D Perceptions by actors in polity that their symbolic base of power is eroding from inequalities and internal threats E Perceptions by actors in polity that other neighboring societies have resources that can restore the legitimacy of polity and, thereby, (a) reduce internal threats and (b) reduce perceived external threats, whether economic or political, posed by other societies F Perceptions by actors in polity that they hold key advantages in geo-political conflict, especially a marchland advantage where they can march out without fear of attack from other societies on some or most of its borders because of ecological barriers (mountains, bodies of water, deserts, and other ecological conditions) G Perceptions that they have dramatically more coercive power than the societies that they will confront, with these perceptions increasing with: 1. The level of organization and solidarity of their coercive forces is higher than those that they must confront 2. The level of war-making technology that they have vis-à-vis those that they will confront 3. The structure and culture of the societies that will confront are in decline and increasingly stagnant

5.3

Success and Failure in Geo-Political Actions

Several of the models and theoretical approaches outlined in Chap. 3 are relevant to developing a more general model of success and failure in creating and sustaining a geo-political inter-societal system. A society engaged in geo-political action will be successful, at least initially, when it is large enough to mobilize a substantial military force, when it possesses military technologies and technologies in general that are superior to potential adversaries (or at a minimum are equivalent to those of potential adversaries), when high levels of solidarity and organization of military forces exists vis-à-vis potential adversaries, and when a marchland advantage allowing them to fight, at least initially, a one-front or limited-front war with ecological barriers protecting the home base of a marching society. For example, in the aftermath of World War II, Russia was in position (in Eastern Germany) to create an empire because potential adversaries were, themselves, recovering from the larger war that had just ended. And since Russia met all the other conditions just enumerated, including a marchland advantage with cold Siberia protecting its home base, it could quickly take hold of Eastern European and Baltic societies, plus Afghanistan and other Asian societies, creating a large empire

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that would last less than five decades because holding territories is often more difficult than initially conquering them. Centuries earlier, smaller populations of Mongols started raiding from the Steppes of Central Asia, which gave them a marchland advantage, and conquering larger, seemingly more developed societies but in a period of decline. However, as outlined earlier in Chap. 3, the great advantage of the Mongols in Ibn Khaldun’s portrayal was the high ethnic solidarity of the Mongols. And, as Turchin (2006) emphasized, their vastly superior military capacities using saddles and new technologies to harness horses, and later horse-driven chariots, for rapid and very violent movements into societies of Eastern Europe and then Asia, eventually including China. Furthermore, their steel weapons, coupled with the rapid-fire delivery of coercive force on slower moving ground forces allowed the Mongols to dominate geo-political formations in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Overall, the Mongols illustrate some of the conditions allowing for success in geo-political action. Yet, as was the case for the Dutch and British geo-economic5 and geo-political political empires, the size of the population at the home base would be a weak point for long-term control of the vast territories so far from their home, as was the case base for Mongols, even though the British, and Dutch had superior technologies and productive capacities. Accordingly, to control territories for longer periods, much depends on the strategies of domination employed by a hegemon in geo-political and, as we will see in the next chapter, geo-economic expansions. Both the size and duration of geo-political (and geo-economic) inter-societal formations thus depend upon the strategy of domination as it affects the capacity of a hegemon to sustain (a) administrative structures monitoring and controlling a conquered population and (b) military technology advantages over the conquered (by keeping them out of their hands). Such is not always easy because longer-term geo-political formations regularize geo-economic relations with defeated populations through market exchange, taxation and tributes, and infrastructure developments that sustain control but also provide benefits for the conquered. And, just whether or not these conditions can be met often depends upon: (a) the size of the conquered populations, (b) the level of economic, political, and cultural development before conquest, (c) the level of concentration (in large communities) or dispersal across territories, (d) the total level of territory to be controlled and its ecology, (e) the presence of other marching hegemons posing military threats to the empire of another hegemon, and as always, (f) the size of the hegemon’s home-base populations and the extent to which the coercive-administrative bases of power are filled with members of hegemon’s home-base population.

5

Of course, the precursor to the British Empire was the East India Company that, given some support by the British navy, was able with a private army to ravage India for a prolonged period before the British government reigned in the power of this company and, instead, embarked on a less brutal strategy of colonial occupation (see Table 4.1).

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Coupled with the problems of sustaining a marchland advantage, a growing empire exposes itself to potential adversaries on its expanded borders, there by makes sustaining the empire increasingly difficult (Collins 1986); and so, with some notable exceptions, empires rarely last much over 120 years and, indeed, are subject to the decline outlined in Turchin’s conceptualizations of what makes a more “advanced” society vulnerable to conquest. The same dynamics apply to both geo-political and geo-economic inter-societal systems. And the further from their home base is an occupying power, the more vulnerable these systems become, over the long run. For example, the Spanish empire could survive in the Americas for a long time, even with a relatively small coercive and administrative force relative to the size of the territories and populations inhabiting these territories, because its “enemies” were also a long way out from their home bases. However, as North America became increasingly inhabited by immigrants from other European societies, notably the British Isles and later Germany as well as other European immigrants, the Spanish coercive force would eventually have to face-off against new land-based powers, such as the expanding United States in North America, thereby taking away its advantage during the early phases of European settlements several hundred years earlier. In the end, naval forces and key military units were far from their home bases facing adversaries that had increasingly developed infrastructures and war-making capacities in North America. Still, this settling of North America took over a century for such changes to occur; and so, the Spanish empire was a relatively enduring one but ended with the Spanish-American War (1898) but in fact the Spanish had been in slow retreat as geo-political power for as much as a century.

5.3.1

A Model of Geo-Political Dynamics

Figure 5.3 attempts to model these complex dynamics in highly abstract form.The figure draws heavily from the abstracted model that Collins developed to explain the evolution of the Soviet Empire but altered to explain a larger range of geo-political inter-societal systems. Figure 5.3 is the most complex that we will present because we are trying to capture the range of geo-political formations that have evolved and, hopefully, that will evolve in the future. Like other models previously drawn, the dynamics flow left to right, but as the arrows going from right to left emphasize, the outcomes of this flow of events inevitably have reverse causal effects feeding back form right to left. As we have emphasized, the social universe is recursive in that forces create outcomes that alter the very forces that generated these outcomes. And in the case of this model, the beginning of collapse in a geo-political inter-societal system activates processes that often lead to the implosion of a geo-political empire back toward its home base. Often it can take several episodes of collapse for the de-evolution of a geo-political system to be complete. The Holocene, the current epoch, especially the last 5,000

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Fig. 5.3 The Complex Dynamics of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Formations

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5.3 Success and Failure in Geo-Political Actions 145

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years, has experienced not only the rise of state-based societies, which are the most likely to generate geo-political formations but has also seen earlier inter-societal systems rise and fall at a rapid rate, with only a small handful of geo-political empires lasting beyond a century or two. The terminology in the figure is designed to denote this latter period, but the model can still be used to explain simpler geo-political systems that may have emerged much earlier in inter-societal evolution. The capacity to consolidate the four bases of power—coercive, administrative, incentive, and symbolic—is determined by the variables on the side of the model. Population size drives much of societal evolution, creating selection pressures and logistical loadings on social structures and cultures. The cluster of variables in the upper left side in the model outlines the forces increasing production and distribution, as these operate to create the resources needed to consolidate power. The forces at the lower left of the model represent the ecology and demography in which a society operates, especially the extent to which they pose “threats” to a society. Threats almost always led to the consolidation of power along its coercive and administrative bases. And, as these threats can escalate to the extent that they generate tensions and potential for revolt. And so, as a society grows, as production increases, as markets generate wealth that can be taxed and distributed unequally, the consolidation of power around the coercive and administrative bases inevitably occurs, although there are also efforts to mollify the tensions by consolidating coercive power along the incentive and symbolic bases of power. Thus, internal and external threats when increasing thus bias the consolidation of power toward the coercive and administrative bases, whereas if threat was low and, and especially if market dynamics were in play (upper left side of model), there is likely to be more balance in the consolidation of the four bases of power. As power is centralized, and if a polity perceives (whether accurately or not) that it has the technology, productivity, and size to win wars, it is likely to begin developing a geo-political strategy. As outlined in Fig. 5.2, an existing and well-institutionalized geo-economic system can bias the strategy of an emerging geo-political hegemon toward a geo-economic strategy of domination, although such a strategy would also require the use, or threats of use, of superior force on other societies (see Table 4.1). Whatever the nature of the geo-political actions—whether as support of geo-economic actions or an outright war and efforts at conquest—a society with the superior military and resources—demographic, technological, productive, fiscal, marchland—will likely be successful, at least initially, in war, conquest, and empire building. As the empire expands, however, the number of societies, the size of the populations in these societies, and the expanse of territory to be controlled by a marching polity all increase. At some point, if an inter-societal system is built around geo-political expansion, it will a point of over-extension, as emphasized in Collins model in Fig. 3.5. This point will inevitably occur because there comes a time when a polity cannot sustain coercive and administrative bases of power across vast territories because its home-base population is too small to be the incumbents in all key positions in these far flung bases and/or because it has been necessary to

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recruit indigenous incumbents. In either case, the base of power on which the empire is built is vulnerable from a lack of ability to monitor and coerce or by a potential revolt of those recruited from conquered societies to occupy positions in coercive forces or administrative bureaucracies. At the same time, an expanding empire may begin to confront another advancing empire with superior technologies and better organization of its coercive and administrative bases of power. A showdown war often occurs, with the loser having to retreat toward its home base. However, the winner is often left with a larger empire to control, with the result that it is weakened and perhaps at its point of being overextended vis-à-vis other societies or marching states, or alternatively, to its ability to repress revolt from populations in its now much larger empire. Indeed, winners of a showdown war can find themselves vulnerable to collapse. Just how these processes play out is related to a key factor—the strategy of a hegemon for controlling conquered populations—that cannot be signed in Fig. 5.3 because it involves qualitatively different (rather than quantitative levels) strategies of conquest and control of conquered populations (see Table 4.1 on page 112). The question marks (?) on the arrows to and from the “Strategy of the Hegemon” box determine when over-extension is likely; and the boldface arrows on the right half of the model emphasize that once over-extension occurs, it sets into motion self-amplifying feedbacks and feedforwards that accelerate collapse. Some strategies of a hegemon, such as use of large coercive force on all sectors of the society accompanied by a large administrative bureaucracy, impose very high costs. These costs erode power and push a hegemon faster to a point of over-extension that makes the hegemon vulnerable to defeat in a showdown war or to defeat by internal revolts or by coalitions of societies engage in counter geo-political actions against a hegemon. Other strategies impose less costs but involve using indigenous populations, technology transfers, and infrastructural development of conquered societies—all of which improve the lives of the conquered—but which in the long run provide incentives for indigenous populations to expel their conquerors and benefactors. Again, Table 4.1 (page 112) lists various strategies that have been used in creating both geo-political and geo-economic inter-societal systems. If, and when, a hegemon reaches the point of over-extension is thus determined by the strategy of domination that they have employed in creating a geo-political inter-societal system.

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5 Geo-Political Dynamics

Strategies of Domination, Point of Over-Extension, and Collapse of Geo-Political Systems Mutual Defense Pacts

There can be many diverse kinds of geo-political inter-societal systems. The most minimal is one not generally studied by theorists in sociology or world-systems analysis. Defense agreements arise when two or more societies facing a threat from another society or inter-societal system. For example, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was created as a mutual defense pact among the United States and North American allies with Western Europe in the aftermath of World War II as the Soviet Union was increasingly perceived as a theat. A pact like NATO will generally lead to expanded geo-economic and geo-cultural exchanges to strengthen relations among those societies seeking mutual protection. The collapse of the Soviet Empire allowed other societies, once under Soviet influence or control, to become part of NATO, eventually leading to more tensions with Russia as it moved from its brief period of a democratic rule back to more despotic rule. Such mutual defense geo-political formations have probably always existed, even among much simpler societies of the distant past and are, even in societies without a polity, such as hunter-gathers. But in societies with an institutionalized polity, such geo-political formations generally dominant polity. In the case of NATO, the danger from Russia, escalating dramatically with the invasion into Ukraine in 2022, made the societies in NATO as well as those not in NATO very vulnerable to attack from Russian. The hegemon of NATO, the United States, had an enormous marchland advantage, being buffeted by two oceans and the entire continent of western Europe. And of course, the Russian invasion immediately shored up NATO and led to other European nations seek to joint NATO, leading to a more integrated NATO and, perhaps ironically, setting up further dangers of a clash among world level hegemonic societies, such as China, as well as with Russian and its allies, such as Iran. So, while mutual defense packs are often loose, the increase in external threats immediately led to the consolidation into a more integrates system of societies. Geo-Political theorizing in sociology and history6 is, however, more interested in empires where territory is taken through military action that, in essence, involves an invasion into other societies, leading to a larger polity across several societies. What becomes difficult to analyze, once this more substantial threshold is employed for a geo-political system, is the conflation of geo-economic and geo-political dynamics as well as geo-cultural forces. Inter-societal systems are often built around seeking resources from societies and often using threats or actual coercive force to enforce resource extraction as well as to fend off other societies that might also seek these resources. Indeed, this latter consideration can be more pronounced than the actual

6

Political science as a discipline, however, does study such defensive coalitions extensively.

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exertion of force within a dependent because, as Richard Emerson’s power-dependence theory, and as the early dependency theories of world-systems theorizing both emphasized. A geo-economic hegemon always seeks to keep other societies from breaking its monopolistic control over a dependent society. This strategy has always been employed, with one of the most prominent cases is polity of Venice’s coercive control at the height of its power of routes through the Mediterranean to block direct access by other European hegemons to the spices of Asia through the Mediterranean Sea. In essence, blocking fleets of ships from reaching the eastern land masses of the Mediterranean, societies such as Spain and Portugal had to go around the tip of African to participate fully in the markets for spice and other exotic resources not available in Western Europe. Political power was exerted to protect geo-economic relations with actors bringing spices from societies such as India to the Eastern Mediterranean, thus giving the Venetians an edge in profits in the spice trade, at least for a time at their different peak power. Accordingly, geo-economic trade in international markets can bring geo-political force into play, not so much on the markets and societies producing resources to be marketed (although some force may be applied here) but on blocking access of other would-be hegemons access to these markets. Other powers could still access these resources but a dramatically higher cost. And so, geo-economics can often bring geo-politics into exchange relationships favoring an economic hegemon. Indeed, the “gunboat diplomacy” used by the United States with countries south of the U.S border in north, central, and south America was one such case. The United States did not politically dominate these societies (except a few such as Panama)) but it could use strategic force to sustain access to resources, at least for a time. These kinds of “plantation” (see Table 4.1 on page 112) inter-societal systems are always subject to incursions by other powerful polities and their economic actors as well as to revolt by those being exploited. As a result, they do not endure for long in most cases because the pattern of political control by is generally weak and focused on having easy access to particular resources and on not having to compete with other societies for access to these resources.

5.4.2

Kin-Based Geo-Political Formations

Unilineal kinship systems provide a structural base for polity formation because they create layers of organization of nuclear kin units in lineages, clans and sub-clans and, at times, moieties. Leaders of the top level of this organizational order—the dominant clan and, if present, moiety become de facto polities. The head of the dominant clan or moiety as specified by kinship rules then becomes leader, with other high-level kin leaders in other clans and moieties becoming part of the decision-making process of the head of the dominant structural unit in the kinship system. This kind of hierarchical organization has some flexibility, but its hallmark is the capacity to create something like a bureaucracy from kinship relations in less

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developed societies. Indeed, if a society begins to differentiate a state-formation outside of kinship, it is often mixed with the unilineal system of leadership, at least until the state is clearly institutionalized. There are many types of societies—simple and advanced horticulture, even simple agrarian, herding, and fishing that are organized on the basis of kinship. And, at times, these types of societies become like “marcher states” but without a bureaucratized state but its functional equivalent in the kinship system organizing the distribution of authority and power in the society. Such kin-based also generate loyalty to the system, even with the inevitable tensions that were often manifest in a system where many of its incumbents find themselves under the authority of in-laws. Yet, kinship rules are highly moralized and widely accepted and, hence, serve as effective symbolic bases of power legitimating the leadership of the kin system. In island societies, matrilineal kinships often evolved to assure that some male relatives on the female’s side of family units are present to sustain the organization of the kin system and the polity inherent in this system. Matrilineal descent thus pushes those who can be warriors away from their nuclear family units to maximize the number of warriors engaged in geo-political action, while assuring stability of the kinship system. Such was not always the case, but the key practice was to assure that the kin hierarchy was maintained at the home base so that “armies” of warriors could be gone for a period. The resulting formations from this form of social organization were geo-political, but they were also geared to extract resources and, on rare occasions, even slaves from other populations. The inter-societal formations were probably the first marcher societies, and they were generally smaller in scale than state-based marcher societies, although the “unification” of the Hawaiian Islands created a relatively extensive geo-political system, but it was probably less populated than say, the marcher states of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayans before European contact, or early marcher states in the Middle East. This basic template was to be duplicated by all marcher states: armies march out from a home base and successively conquer other populations, extracting resources from and using a coercive-administrative base of power to control conquered populations. And at times, marcher states would kill many in conquered populations. The strategies employed probably varied in terms of use of coercive power which, at one extreme, involved killing off those who might resist geo-political control, as Genghis Khan began to do in the early 1200s, and even after his death, geo-political campaigns were often vindictive and violent, killing off many members of a conquered population. At the other extreme were tribute-based empires that were created by violence against resisting armies but, after conquest, led to monitoring and controlling activities in the existing institutional systems of the conquered in exchange for tribute extracted for sustaining military presence and for supporting elites and the state at the home base. The Roman Empire was of this nature (see below). Between these two extremes were other strategies, all using the coercive and administrative bases of power to extract resources that were used to support the coercive-administrative base of the hegemon in a conquered society and the bases of power at the hegemon’s home base.

5.4 Strategies of Domination, Point of Over-Extension…

5.4.3

151

“Plantation” Geo-Economic Systems and Power Use

The cases where coercive force is threatened or used to protect geo-economic advantages in securing resources are difficult to classify but they are primarily geo-economic with elements of geo-political intervention. Other difficult to gauge patterns are those that occur when a dominant society seeks very targeted resources in a dependent society, such as a particular agricultural product like coffee or mineral resources like oil,7 gold, and other metals for export. Often, it is economic actors gaining control of the indigenous actors—farmers, mining companies, plantation owners—through trade agreements, coupled with buying off governmental regulators, which allows them to extract resources without much political intervention. Such had been the case in the U.S. exploitation of the Americas, but once other players seeking resources in the Americas or the actors extracting and producing resources for export seek to sell to these other players that something like gunboat diplomacy sets in. In Table 4.1, we labeled these as “plantation-based” inter-societal systems because they are based on unequal and unfair exchange for a very specific resource by actors in a dominant society. Such systems are often held together by bribes and other financial incentives to political leaders or economic actors without the use of coercive force within a dependent society, with threats often displaced to would-be competing societies for resources of a dependent society. When hegemons begin to use coercive power inside of a dependent society, this use may evolve into gaining control of the polity and key sectors of a dependent society’s economy and, thus, evolve toward a more geo-political inter-societal system. But if the resources secured through these geo-political actions are in high demand, as was oil in the Middle East or spices in Asia, an evolving geo-political system on top of exploitive geo-economic relations faces a dramatic increase in its logistical loads, fending off other geo-political actors from societies with coercive power as well as dealing with the tensions of using power to control actors extracting resources for export. To the extent that geo-politics begins to shadow geo-economic dynamics in such plantation-like forms of domination, the resulting competition of economic actors from strong polities with coercive power begins to unravel both the original geo-economic system and geo-political system imposed by a foreign polity. As was the case in the Middle East, the British soon found that investments in domestic infrastructures of oil producers, coupled with increased economic competition from other powerful societies, were becoming very costly to sustain. The result from external geo-political pressures on top of internal threats from the subordinated

7

Obviously, a resource like oil or other minerals are not what we would consider plantations, but the structural arrangement is similar. Economic actors are being forced into unfavorable exchanges with economic actors from a dominant society, thus setting off “balancing” strategies outlined by Emerson (1962), which if they force a hegemon to invest more coercive and administrative power on a domestic economy will generally increase logistical loads and cost beyond what can be sustained for a long period.

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economic and political actors in the dependent society was simply too costly to be sustained, thus leading to the transfer control of resources back to the indigenous polity. Thus, these kinds of “plantation” inter-societal systems are always subject to incursions by other power polities and their economic actors as well as to revolt by those being exploited. As a result, they do not endure for long in most cases because the pattern of political control by a hegemon is generally weak and focused on gaining access to resources more than extensive domination of the institutional systems of a dependent society. Moreover, plantation patterns in the more generalized sense are both geo-economic and geo-political formations; and in most cases, there is a tension between economic exploitation vs. level of coerciveadministrative control of the entire population of society. Indeed, once political control increases dramatically, the resulting system is not likely to endure. Other powerful polities and their economic actors will put pressure on the hegemon, as will internal forces seeking to have other economic actors compete for resources, thereby driving prices up can imposing very high costs on the hegemon.

5.4.4

Tributary Patterns of Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems

This kind of geo-political system involves conquest of another society or population using coercive power, with coercive forces remaining in conquered territories along with an administrative staff of the conquering hegemon. The strategy revolves around leaving intact most of the institutional systems of the conquered, including the polity and its administration, in exchange for resources (often money but other valued resources prized at the home base). The resources are used to finance the presence of the coercive and administrative forces, with the rest being sent back to polity in the home base. The hegemon may build out infrastructures that facilitate the accommodation of the coercive and administrative forces and, to some extent, the general population. In the case of Roman occupation of populations in Europe, barracks for soldiers were built and homes for administrators to the Roman standard, which was generally much higher than that of the indigenous population, including sewage systems, roads, aqueducts, bathing pools, and heating systems. Political control of this nature is possible when the hegemon has dramatically greater coercive power than those conquered as well as those societies outside of the “empire.” In return for acquiescence to Roman power and authority (at times Roman law) and to Roman demands for tribute, the population was allowed to live pretty much as it always had and be governed by indigenous political leaders and administrators under constant “observation” by Roman military and administrative officers. Smaller empires in meso-America were often tribute-based, with the tribute financing the military and administrative operations in conquered territories and cities, and with the rest of the tribute going back to the emperor of the home base to

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finance military, administrative, ritual (religious), and legal operations at the home base and elite lifestyles and privilege. Some of the tribute was also used to create and maintain infrastructures in the home base, as well as linkages of the home base (e.g., roads) with satellite cities and territories. Tribute-based geo-political inter-societal systems can endure if the hegemon has a decisive coercive advantage and prevents those conquered from access to military technologies and weapons, while having the capacity to defeat revolts from inside the “empire” or from political actors outside the boundaries of the empire. Tribute systems may decline, via the kinds of processes outlined by Peter Turchin (Sect. 3.2.1), whereby the hegemon engages in excessive spending of elite privilege that begins to weaken its military and administrative bases of power. In turn, this excessive spending on privilege opens the door to internal revolts of the deprived in a society and/or external warfare with emerging geo-political powers sensing weakness in a hegemon. If, however, conquered populations can be co-opted to accept governance by an external power, revolt and conquest from without become less likely. Such co-optation is more likely if the infrastructures of the conquered are improved and if the lifestyles of the conquered have improved under rule by an external hegemon. Moreover, if the hegemon’s superior power keeps old enemies from invading, this too would increase commitments to the system of domination. Another form of tribute empire was created by Islamic warriors initially following Mohammed and then other Caliphs. Unlike the Romans, the coercive forces were often tribes that had engaged in war against each other, but temporarily unified in their commitment to Islam, and being so, they fought very effectively. And they did so with incredible speed, successfully attacking Byzantine and Sassanian unbelievers, followed by conquests of Syria (year 636), Iran (636), Iraq (637), Mesopotamia (641), Egypt (642), and then moving across northern Africa and conquering Spain in 711, followed by incursions into Portugal and Gaul. The speed of these victories attests the solidarity and ferocity of the warriors who were often confronting larger armies—much like the Mongols were to do centuries later. Tribute and “booty” were extracted from members of the population, often using existing tax collectors. The monies collected were used to pay the warriors a salary, which created incentives for warriors to keep fighting new wars to assure themselves of a steady income and accumulated wealth. Thus, the tribute was being distributed to fighters as much as the Caliph and other leaders at the home base. Moreover, the home bases of warriors were changing depending upon the composition of various territories and the distributions of Christians, Jews, and Muslim converts. For much of the first one-hundred years after Mohammed initiated warfare as a strategy for reaching converts, the salaries of the warriors and their descendants who had been early converts to Islam worked to discourage, ironically, too many new converts to Islam. The warriors did not want to share their income with near converts. In the end, however, new rules and laws allowed all soldiers to receive salaries. However, the precedent of tolerating other religions remained, and thus many institutional systems of conquered remained largely intact and, in fact, were used by Islamic forces. Yet over time the Islamic system of law, corporate units for

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organizing worship, and other cultural norms and ideologies become a part of many societies stretching across Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia. Indeed, non-believers in these societies became a tax base as increasingly a “special tax” on non-believers (in Islam) was increasingly used to collect the funds necessary to sustain the troops in garrisons and to encourage members of garrison to be willing to fight on new fronts to keep the funds used for salaries coming. Later, conflicts among various factions of Islam began to work against full success, and moreover, some of these rifts have lasted to the present day. But an empire that stretched from Spain, across the top of Africa, to the end of the Mediterranean running through the Middle East to the eastern part of China had by the eighth century encompassed a significant portion of the world population as converts to Islam. Still, the old tribal tensions among members of the fighting forces, existence of many non-believers in Islamic territories, and efforts of political reorganization in Europe toward nation-building and, for a time, in crusades by Europeans to the near East, particularly what is now Israel, eroded the geo-political system that had been created by Islamic forces. What remains today is a system of societies, mostly in the Middle East and Central Asia, that have remained Islamic and, thus, represent a geo-cultural system across a diversity of political and economic patterns of social organization.

5.4.5

Colonial Patterns in Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems

A colonial strategy involves using military force to dominate another society, but this strategy of domination is much different than the tribute system. Colonial powers, like those enforcing a tribute system, keep a military force in the society to maintain order. The big difference with the tribute system is that the colonial power is seeking resources across a larger range for export to the home base where they will often be converted to products that are sold domestically but also on world markets, and often back to the society that initially provided the basic resources for production of export goods. In this way, the hegemon gets resources less expensively because, like the conquering polity in a tribute system, there are few powers, if any, that can defeat the colonial power, at least in neighboring societies. When goods are exported, they bring additional revenues to economic actors in the hegemon’s home base and to the polity to sustain its coercive and administrative bases of power in the colonized society. In the end, colonial powers often work to build up infrastructures and to alter key institutional systems, particularly the domestic polity and the economy. They may also seek to make religious converts, but the goal is to control territories that can produce wealth for the hegemon. Later colonial powers like Great Britain often tried to make polity more democratic and to rationalize the political bureaucracy by putting home-base personnel in key executive positions in new kinds of

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governmental agencies largely staffed by indigenous employees. To meet staffing requirements, a colonial power may also expand educational institutional systems, often in the model of their home-base educational system, in order to produce workers for not only political positions but also to produce entrepreneurial economic actors who may also become partners with economic actors from the home base of a hegemon. Thus, a great deal of institutional change may occur in a colonized society compared to, for example, a plantation form of geo-political control. The result is that the colonized society may experience considerable development, especially large complex societies like India, whereas colonized societies that are not large and, in fact, are societies with typically one basic resource are more like plantation geo-economic systems but, in this case, a hegemon controls and often transforms the domestic polity into an image reflective its own polity led by a “governor” and staff but also filled with indigenous workers. The island colonies of the Atlantic, colonized by the Spanish, British, and even U.S. polity are good examples of these. The result is the much of the culture of the hegemon, such as language fluency as well as values and ideologies institutional domains—e.g., polity, economy, education, and often religion—are altered in the direction of those at the hegemon’s home base. Such change is easier in small societies than in colonization of a larger society like India. Of course, as is well known, colonization also changes a society in ways that, eventually, lead to social movements to kick the colonists out which, and as the case of the British Empire, would take many years, especially in the colonized islands of the Atlantic. These were more easily controlled; and moreover, there remained economic benefits of remaining “affiliated” with a colonizing power that had long ago returned government back to the native populations (which now included many ex-patriots of Britain and the Americas). Yet, the core of the societies of the British Empire, where “the sun never set”, was relatively short period because, in the end, the British Isle home population, especially England alone, was too small to have a large empire for long; and in the end, the logistical problems and cost of maintaining such a large empire were too much for a small, though powerful, society. Distance from the home base is a key variable in the viability of a geo-political formation (Collins 1986); and one where oceans need to be crossed to maintain control of the empire becomes increasingly unviable, especially for the comparatively small population in England during the height of the empire. In the end, colonization works against the conquered population initially but, perhaps ironically, the hegemon’s effort to change institutional systems, built up infrastructures, expand markets, transfer technologies, and impose new cultural ideologies and normative systems all lead to the de-colonization and reversion of control to indigenous actors of now more modern society. Whether or not the generations of suppressed and oppressed populations were worth the long-term benefits of colonization is a contentious issue. Yet, colonized portions of the old British Empire were soon to be the semi-periphery moving to core societies of the world system. Such was the case with the United States and now China. Today, colonization is a less viable geo-political strategy because of the costs in a high

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technology world and distances from home base. Yet, for all of the ills of such a system, it accelerated the growth of the modern world system by extending expanding extending domestic and international markets, by massive transfers of technology, and by implementing industrial production around the world.

5.4.6

Geo-Political Inter-Societal Systems and the Emergence of Capitalism

Capitalism began to evolve in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, a period often called the “Dark Ages” because political organization had de-evolved in Europe, as had the economies of Europe, to simple forms of manorial feudal estates and various forms of quasi city-states. Capitalism might not have evolved, however, without this political vacuum created by the fall of Rome as geo-political power, which despite the label “Dark Ages,” was much more dynamic than once portrayed (Lenski 1964). Without the heavy hand of a dominant empire, Eurpoe had now become more of a geo-cultural system organized by the Catholic Church with its home base in the Vatican, although Popes could call on mercenary armies from Italy when coercion was required. The result of these changes was opportunities for new kinds of political and economic formations. One path, after hundreds of years of conflict among feudal powers, was the consolidation of territories into still relatively small geo-political formations, but eventually these would be further consolidated into larger territorial bases that would eventually become the nation-states of Europe. The other path that was just as important was geo-economic inter-societal systems created by the Hanseatic League, where local city-states and manorial estates created a league of societies with no central political power across northern Europe. Instead, manorial estates and city-states were connected by rules of membership in the league via laws regulating markets and obligations among actors engaged in exchange. The coordination of markets, in turn, allowed entrepreneurial economic actors to create new products to be sold in expanded networks of markets. And so, even during of period of constant geo-political skirmishes, capitalism was evolving in ways that would not have been possible if a geo-political hegemon-like Rome controlled the territories. Without heavy taxation and tribute, coupled with more freedom to invent and create new products, market-oriented productive activity was increasing, and dramatically so once “peasants” began to leave the manorial feudal estates for urban areas where many new occupations and lines of creative endeavor further expanded markets. Indeed, the propositions outlined by Jack Goldstone’s analysis (Sect. 3.2.5) offer a more theoretical view of what was occurring. At the same time, the formation of the basic contours of modern Europe was also taking form, as territories were consolidated into what would be the nations of Europe through geo-political activities. At first, these were often geo-political inter-societal systems because they involved creating feudal “kingdoms” into a

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larger formation, typically unified by a common culture base—history, language, values, ideologies, and other cultural systems. While the Islamic empire penetrated Europe on its western and eastern fronts, the inter-societal political system was evolving to create the societies of Europe, coupled with the spread of markets encouraging entrepreneurship that would begin to link societies in Europe and Asia into a geo-economic system. This re-emergence of Europe would erode the influence of Islam, except in the initial strongholds of Islam in the Middle East and Central Asia, and in parts of northern Africa. But few of these societies in the Islamic world constitute a geo-political system today, and while some have geo-economic relations and clearly geo-cultural formations, they also reveal cultural divisions that do not promote cultural unity or political unity in the sense of geo-political or geo-cultural inter-societal systems. Still, there does remain, however, a cultural force because of the domination of Islamic religious beliefs, Islamic law, and corporate-unit organization of kinship, education, polity, and even economy in heavily Islamic societies today. In contrast, for all of chaos of Europe with decline of the Roman Empire, as is often the case for empires when they begin to collapse, new economic and political inter-societal systems were slowly evolving. The Dark ages, then, were not as static as often portrayed because not only were new polities and nation-states evolving but, equally significantly, so were markets in an environment without the constraints of strong hegemon.

5.5

Additional Theoretical Principles

We are now able to offer some additional theoretical principles, with the proviso that arraying “strategies” of hegemons cannot be easily put on a quantitative scale. That is, some fundamental differences in strategies that cannot be put in a plus or minus relationship with other forces creating geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal systems. We will just need to work around the absence of signs on the arrows in Fig. 5.3 as we formulate propositions.

5.5.1

Success and Size of Geo-Political Expansion

The likelihood of geo-political expansion, outlined in earlier propositions, is related to the success of a marching hegemon and the duration of control by this hegemon. Some additional conditions also operate, as are outlined in Table 5.3.This long theoretical proposition in Table 5.3 lays out what many analysts of geo-political dynamics argue, although these are stated at a much higher level of abstraction to include many diverse types of geo-political formations. Societies that engage in geo-political expansions are likely to be successful when they have demographic advantages (e.g., a larger population), marchland advantages, productive advantages (higher technologies, levels of production, and market distribution), military

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Table 5.3 Propositions on the size and scope of geo-political expansion 1. The level of success in geo-political expansion, as well as the level of duration of a geo-political intersocietal system, is a positive and additive function of: A The size of a hegemon’s population at its home base and, hence, the number of personnel available for military action and for administration of conquered societies B The level of military technologies of the hegemon vis-à-vis other societies in the emerging intersocietal system and potential external adversaries to the hegemon’s control of conquered territories C The level of ethnic or other cultural patterns of solidarity within and between military units, and the efficiency of their coordination against adversaries D The level of wealth to support and sustain military and administrative activities of a hegemon in both conquest and administration of conquered territories, which is a positive and additive function of: 1. The level of gross level of production at the home base of a hegemon 2. The level of productivity (efficiency) at hegemon’s home base 3. The level of efficiency in the system of taxation at the home base and, later, in conquered territories 4. The level of technology relative to that of potential adversaries at any point along the borders of the emerging geo-political formation 5. The degree to which resource extraction from conquered societies does not undermine existing institutional systems, and lifestyles, of those conquered E The level of the capacity to move personnel, resources, information, and military hardware across territories held by a hegemon F The level of investment in providing new infrastructural improvements in conquered societies that (1) increase the capacities specified in [E] above and (2) provide some benefits to the conquered populations G The degree to which the strategy of domination employed by a hegemon does not generate high levels of deprivations among conquered populations, which, in turn, is a multiplicative function of: 1. The degree to which resource extractions are regularized, with the amount and types of resources extracted being predictable, which, in turn, is more likely with a tribute form of resource extraction 2. The degree to which the institutional systems of the conquered, including polity and economy, are left largely intact and are largely administered by members of the conquered population which, in turn, is a positive function of 3-F-1,2 above and negative function of the heavy use of coercive force and administrative incursions in over-taxation and broad-based resource extraction, thereby generating a high level of deprivation among members of the conquered population H The extent to which the marchland advantages of a marching hegemon remain during expansion, with these advantages decreasing with: 1. the size of the territories held by a hegemon 2. the existence of another marching hegemon beyond the boundaries of a geo-political system 2. The size of a geo-political intersocietal system is a positive and additive function of: A Use of co-optive strategies of engage in coercive and administrative control of conquered populations, which increases with: 1. Recruiting members of conquered populations to administer taxation, monitoring, and enforcing transfer of resources to fund domestic activities (continued)

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Table 5.3 (continued) 2. Allowing relatively high degrees of autonomy of institutional domains organizing the indigenous population of a conquered population, particularly the polity, economy, religion, and kinship systems 3. Using indigenous domestic officials within polity to collect taxes and tribute for the hegemon rather than imposing a new bureaucracy on the existing polity 4. Willingness of hegemon to invest capital into the indigenous economy, as well as infrastructure development, benefiting the conquered population 5. Converting a high degree a geo-political domination into a geo-economic inter-societal system, thereby increasing the conquered populations productivity and flow of resources (money, goods, and even immigrants) to the home base of the hegemon and, potentially, back to the conquered population B Sustaining a superior coercive force while, at the same time, allowing for a high degree of self-governance of the population as well as ownership and control over economic activities, which, in turn, is an additive function of: 1. The capacity to prevent the conquered population from gaining access to, or copying, military technology, armaments, and organizational forms of the hegemon 2. The capacity to deploy a large number of military and administrative personnel across territories, which, in turn, is a positive function of: a. the size of the hegemon’s home-base population b. the efficiency of transportation and information technologies C The ability to sustain resource, productive, and marchland advantages at the home base of a geo-political formation D The ability to sustain legitimacy at the home base of a geo-political formation and, at the same time, to generate acceptance and sense of the inevitability of domination by a hegemon, which, in turn, is an additive function of 2-A and 2-B above E The willingness and capacity of a geo-political power to avoid shown-down wars with other marching geo-political powers, which is an additive 2-B, 2-C, and 2-D above

advantages (technology, armaments, infrastructural development), and cultural advantages (e.g., ethnic solidarity of troops engage in fighting). Success in warfare will generally occur with these advantages, although liability of having a smaller population can be overcome by high levels of military technologies, superior armaments, solidarity of coercive forces, and cultural unity at the home base. Indeed, a large population in decline and in disarray is easier to defeat than a smaller population revealing very high solidarity. These advantages can be undone by other conditions to be enumerated, but among those listed under Proposition 3, the strategy of domination becomes critical. In particular, the level, degree, and consistency in resource extraction are important. If a wide swath of resources is extracted, if these resources are extracted to very high degrees, and if resource extraction is inconsistent or seemingly mercurial, the deprivations of conquered populations will rise, and sustaining order by the hegemon will involve ever-more use of the coercive and administrative bases of power, which will only increase deprivations among the conquered. The result is escalating social control problems, which causes increases in logistical loads and costs for a dominant power that over the long run erode many of the advantages that this marching power once enjoyed.

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And, as the size of an empire increases, these logistical loads only increase and, moreover, reduce the marchland advantage of a hegemon and increase the likelihood that another marching hegemon will attack the weakened geo-political formation. The result is additional costs and personnel will be pulled from the home base, weakening the viability of the home base internally and, moreover, making the home base a target of another marching power. A tribute system, when well executed and leaving intact domestic institutions of the conquered and not imposing excessive deprivations can counter these control problems arising from over-use of hegemonic power. But, if the tribute system becomes the source of deprivations and leads to widespread disruptions imposed by the hegemon’s over-use of its coercive and administrative bases of power, then social control problems only escalate. Indeed, the geo-political power can find itself facing internal revolts and, potentially, another marching hegemon on its borders. And these woes only increase as geo-political empires grows. Thus, as we will see, long-term stability of a geo-political system is often tied to its size. As was emphasized, the strategies employed make a big difference in how large an empire can become and how stable in can be over time. Domination can be achieved in a variety of ways as specified by the propositions. The basic message of the propositions is that, while a hegemon must keep those dominated from having access to military technologies and armaments, the strategy in how a hegemon exercises power and administrative control are critical to the stability of a geo-political formation. The key is consistent but not highly exploitive and abusive extraction of resources to support the coercive and administrative bases of power the hegemon, without generating high levels of deprivation among those ruled. If deprivations became too great, internal revolts are likely which forces an expanding polity to engage in constant rear guard coercive actions. The best strategies that hegemons can use are more co-optive along several fronts. One line is to leave intact existing institutional arrangements of a population. Imposing change is highly disruptive to the population but also to those forcing change because the coercive and administrative costs and logistical loads will be high and prevent them from moving out to conquer more territory. Another co-optive strategy to use existing administrative structures to collect taxes from the population and to meet the tribute demands of the occupying power, with these demands being stable, regular, and not too extensive. Another strategy is the intermingling of personnel in the administrative bureaucracies of conquered and conqueror, and for routine, day-to-day policing as well. All of these more co-optive strategies that limit coercive imposition on a population free up military forces to fight new front-line battles as an empire expands. If an empire exists on coercion alone, it cannot last very long, and it will eventually deplete is military forces in light of the larger territories to be controlled, especially as populations begin to become restive from the abusive control by a hegemon. And if a hegemon loses its military advantages, in term of technologies, armaments, and troop solidarities, it will probably lose territory. Even when a marching polity is highly violent in the actual war-making, if it then rules by co-option rather than blatant military force, it can control very.

5.5 Additional Theoretical Principles

5.5.2

161

Duration and Stability of Geo-Political Systems

Geo-Political inter-societal systems vary enormously in their stability. A relative few have lasted for centuries, but most last decades and perhaps a century, but few have persisted for many hundreds of years. The fundamental problem is that geo-political systems are, ultimately, based on the use of coercive force to conquer other populations, which immediately sets of an opposition that is difficult to mollify. Propositions 5 in Table 5.4 outline some of the conditions increasing instability in geo-political formations. The conditions under Proposition 4 in Table 5.4, especially the inability to sustain a monopoly on military technology and armaments from populations within an empire, will inevitably lead to a weakening of social control across the inter-societal system by the hegemon. And, if co-optive strategies that once worked to reduce resentments of conquered population are no longer effective, increasing the use of coercive and administrative control by a hegemon will generally be ineffective in the long run, if heightened repression creates mobilization of counter-coercive power by segments of the conquered population. And, as these dynamics played out, the costs and logistical problems confronting the hegemon would only increase, thereby weakening the capacity to control its inter-societal domination. Proposition 1 in Table 5.4 adds several conditions that work against hegemons, including reaching the point of overextension in terms of the size of territory to be controlled. This point of overextension increases as a growing empire begins to lose its marchland advantage, thereby forcing the hegemon to disperse its coercive resources and expand infrastructures for moving this force about a larger empire. This dispersal of coercive power to new and now vulnerable boundaries weakens the overall coercive capacity of the hegemon, while increasing the costs of sustaining control over territories, both of which invite other marching societies to invade or those under political control of a hegemon to revolt. As troubles mount for the polity of an empire, problems of legitimacy increase, especially at the capital city of the home base. And if inequalities have been mounting at the home base, if elites are not being paid back for loans to polity, if elites are not receiving their traditional share of patronage from tributary inflows, if territories are being lost, and worst of all, if defeat by another marching polity occurs, then legitimacy of polity will decline as its capacity to mobilize coercive force decline dramatically. Once this process begins, the unraveling of a large empire can rapidly accelerate, often looking like an internal implosion that pushes a hegemon back to its home base. And if, another marching empire takes advantage of this vacuum, a new empire may emerge in its place and include the former hegemon as happened to Germany in World War II when it began to fight a two-front war, which invited the United States to intervene and, ironically, the Russian to become the aggressor after Nazi Germany’s push into Russian territory was stopped, leading the Russians to become a marchland aggressor with Siberia at its back. Thus, was born Eastern

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Table 5.4 Propositions on geo-political instability and collapse 1. The level of instability of a geo-political formation over time, eventually leading to a collapse and movement back to the home base of the hegemon, increases when: A The conditions specified under 4-A through 4-E cannot be realized B The loss of its marchland advantage by a hegemonic polity, which increases with: 1. The scope of the boundaries to be controlled by a hegemon 2. The costs relative to productive capacity and efficiency of taxation system of both the hegemon and conquered population as these affects maintaining both coercive and administrative capacities over the territory held by a hegemonic power 3. The number and relative power of hostile societies near the borders of the geo-political intersocietal system 4. The level of both geo-economic and geo-political competition, if not outright conflict, with other dominant societies also engaged in geo-economic and geo-political expansion C The degree to which the logistical and infrastructural capacities of a hegemon to distribute resources, personnel, and information across its territory has been exceeded D The level of inequality, along with any sudden increases in inequalities, of disadvantaged subpopulations at a hegemon’s home base or in the conquered societies under its domination E The degree to which legitimacy provided by the symbolic base of power of the hegemon’s polity has declined at its home base, especially the capital city, which increases with: 1. Economic decline and hence lowered standards of living among sectors of a population, both elite and non-elite 2. Excessive borrowing of funds from elites by leaders of polity, followed by inability to pay interest on or repay loans 3. Increasing inequality within or between elite and non-elite subpopulations 4. Lost patronage by elites from leaders of state 5. Lost territories for any reason in an empire 6. Defeat in war against another hegemonic or marching polity

Germany, with Russia in control of the former Capital city of Germany and much of the territory between Germany and Russia, even extending into central Asia. These same dynamics allowed for Russia to form the Soviet Empire after the collapse of Nazi Germany by virtue of just being in the territory between Germany and Russia at the end of the war. Yet, this empire lacked a strong economic base, and eventually, after Russia lost a prolonged showdown “cold war” to a much more powerful and rich society, the U.S. and its NATO alliance, with the result that it could sustain such a large and diverse territory. The Soviet Empire was based on coercive control and was, therefore costly, eventually bankrupting Russia and leading to its decline as an economic power, which still exists to this day. And, even as Russia now in 2022 invades Ukraine, it is vulnerable because it has not been able to finance high technology “arms race” with the United States because of political corruption but also because of a very unproductive industrial power economy using a currency that few outside the Soviet Union hold in value. Coupled with incredibly stagnant markets before the crash of the Empire, the Russian economy is still very low technology compared to most of the developed world, and most of the

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dynamism in markets has been created by foreign investment rather that Russian entrepreneurship. Russia’s only major products are natural resources, such as oil and gas (and minerals) that it can sell on international markets, but the broader economy is not productive and its most productive portions outside of energy resources—consumer goods—are provided by foreign capital and entrepreneurs— thereby leaving it vulnerable to withdrawal of this capital.

5.6

Conclusion

The models and propositions in this chapter are highly abstract because the goal is to make a theory of inter-societal dynamics more general and relevant to a wider array of inter-societal systems. What is lost in such an exercise, however, is the details of historical or contemporary empirical cases, which always have some unique features of their own. However, the goal of this book is to make theorizing about inter-societal systems more general, which requires raising the level of abstraction at the expense of rich detail of specific historical cases. Yet, sociology, as a social science is about developing general explanations. Other disciplines, like history, are about finding the details of why events have occurred in a particular place and time. Science and history are simply somewhat different types of searches for knowledge, and neither is superior to the other. Rather, each has its place in increasing knowledge and explaining what occurs in the social universe. WSA is more of a historical description of the last 500 years rather than a theoretical explanation of inter-societal dynamics.8 Moreover, the descriptive theorizing of WSA is suspect because it utilizes a categorical system, such as Wallerstein’s tripartite model of core, periphery, and semi-periphery, to describe inter-societal systems. This imposes a certain order on some aspects of data on inter-societal dynamics but, at the same time, reduces its capacity to explain formations and dynamics where the three types of societies are not present. Additionally, so much of WSA also has an implicit ideological agenda that really distorts analysis by imposing a revised Marxism to inter-societal dynamics where the “contradictions of capitalism” become fully evident at the world system level of analysis and, therefore, will now bring about the socialist utopia at both the societal and inter-societal levels. This ideological assumption in WSA reduces the predictive validity of this perspective. When one questions the propositions that we have articulated, the issues become to be very different. If something is clearly wrong and contradicted empirically, then we do not argue but seek to revise models and principles, create new models and principles. If something has been left out, then we formulate a new proposition, and revise models. This is very different that saying what is the “right” or “inevitable” state of human organization or destiny.

8

Some aspects of world-systems analysis are, however, theoretical, such as Chase-Dunn’s iteration model and the arguments of dependency theorizing.

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Such arguments are part of ideological belief systems to which scholars are committed, which is fine but not a very useful explanation of the phenomenon being examined. By presenting abstract models and propositions to make sense of very complex and robust dynamics of history and the contemporary world, we recognize that we might be wrong and need to revise models and propositions. This is the nature of science. Such is always much easier when theoretical statements are not based on a cherished ideology or even a strong bias toward any theoretical position. Thus, in the search for “a more general theory” about inter-societal dynamics, our goal is to lay out some highly general propositions and analytical models that we think might be useful, but they are not the ultimate truth but simply an effort to get at the generic and universal properties of inter-societal dynamics. If our models and propositions do not seem quite right, it is easy enough to change them and make them more isomorphic with empirical and historical reality. Our goal is not to argue for a particular position or stance, whether ideological or theoretical, but to help build a testable theory of inter-societal dynamics.

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. Layton, Robert. 1986. Political and Territorial Structures Among Hunter-Gatherers. Man 21 (1): 18–33. Flanagan, James G. 1989. Hierarchy in Simple “Egalitarian” Societies. Annual Review of Anthropology 18: 245–266. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2021. On Human Nature: The Biology and Sociology that Made Us Human. New York and London: Routledge. Spencer, Herbert. 1874. The Study of Sociology. New York: D. Appleton. 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. Carneiro, Robert L. 2012. “The Circumscription Theory: A Clarification, Amplification, and Reformulation.” Social Evolution and History 11: 5–31. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2004. Toward a General Sociological Theory of the Economy. Sociological Theory 22(2): 229–246. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1998. Some Elementary Principles of Geo-politics and Geo-economics. Eura American: Journal of European and American Studies 28: 41–71. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2003. Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution. Boulder CO: Rowman and Littlefield. Turner, Jonathan. H. 2010a. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 2 on Microdynamics. New York: Springer. Tilly, Charles. 1994. Entanglements of European Cities and States. In, Cities and the Rise of States in Europe AD 1000 to 1800, eds. Tilly, C. and Wim Blockmans. Boulder: Westview Press. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso.

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Kentor, Jeffrey. 2000. Capital and Coercion: The Role of Economic and Military Power in the World-Economy 1800–1990. New York: Routledge. Lenski, Gerhard. 1964. Power and Privilege: A Theory of Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill. Weber, Max. 1922 [1968]). Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turchin, Peter. 2006. War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires. New York: Plume. Collins, Randall. 1986. Weberian Sociological Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1972. Patterns of Social Organization: A Survey of Social Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1995. Macrodynamics: Toward a Theory on the Organization of Human Populations. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Turner, Jonathan. H. 1997. The Institutional Order: Economy, Kinship, Religion, Polity, Law, and Education in Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective. New York: Longman. Emerson, Richard M. 1962. Power-Dependence Relations. American Sociological Review 27 (1): 31–41.

Chapter 6

Geo-Economic Dynamics

6.1

Reconceptualizing the Economy

An economy is an institutional domain built to resolve several fundamental adaptive problems of human populations: (1) gathering or extracting sufficient resources from the environment to sustain humans and the structures organizing their daily activities, (2) production involving the conversion of resources gathered/extracted into usable “goods,” and (3) distributing these “goods” to members of a society and the social structures organizing their activities. The classification of societies over the last 400,000 years is primarily based on how societies address these “adaptive problems”—e.g., hunting and gathering, settled hunter-gatherers, simple horticulture, advanced horticulture, simple agrarian, advanced agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial. As a rough approximation of societies, this classification system is sufficient. However, the conceptualization of economies—their elements and dynamics—are often too limited for the broader view of the institutional systems organizing all types of pre-modern and modern societies. As a result, the analysis of economies and economic relations between societies over the entire history of human social organization is distorted. Accordingly, we re-conceptualize the nature of economic systems in pre-modern and modern societies in order to start developing a general theory of geo-economic formations and their operative dynamics in inter-societal systems. The key elements driving the dynamics of economic systems in societies revolve around the nature and levels of the following: (1) technology, (2) physical capital, (3) human capital, (4) transactional capital, (5) property, (6) structural formations, and (7) cultural formations. Compared to early conceptualizations in economics (e.g., Marshall 1920; Robbins 1935; Marx 1959), our conceptualization of the economy is broader because it seeks to conceptualize economies in institutional terms (Abrutyn and Turner 2022; Turner 1995, 1997, 2003, 2010a). Each of these elements is examined below.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_6

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Technology

As we emphasized in Chap. 1, technology is generally defined as knowledge about how to manipulate environments (physical, biotic, and social). Accordingly, technology is the knowledge to build tools for human adaptation to physical, biotic, and social environments. For example, a spear, bow and arrow, factory, cell phone, or cars are physical manifestations of technologies that are created and used as instruments for manipulating environments. The accumulation of knowledge increases a population’s technology and ability to manipulate environments by building physical objects and facilities that directly affect patterns of social organization in the sociocultural, physical, and biotic universes.

6.1.2

Physical Capital

Physical capital denotes the implements and other materials used to gather resources, convert them into products, and distribute them to members of a population. Here, we differentiate between physical and transactional capital where some conceptualize money and other instruments facilitating exchanges as physical capital while we conceptualize mediums of exchange as transactional capital (see below). We make this important distinction because mediums of exchange are not physical but rather cultural because they represent a normative way to assign values and facilitate the exchange of resources, products, and services. Additionally, as economies evolve, mediums of exchange (e.g., currency) have become increasingly non-physical; early societies (hunter-gatherers through the agrarian era) utilized physical media of exchange (e.g., shells or metal coins) to denote value but later societies adopted paper currency, and most recently, digital banking and currency (e.g., Bitcoin). Therefore, while mediums of exchange are capital, they are not very physical because they are a cultural scale for assessing values and facilitating exchange. Thus, currency and other media of exchange are transactional capital because, over humans’ evolutionary history, they allow for increasingly dynamic transactions in markets and other venues. In contrast to transactional capital, physical capital refers to physical objects and facilities created using technology and transactional capital for gathering, producing, and distributing resources, products, and services in the economy and building infrastructure for organizing all other institutional domains—e.g., roads, buildings, factories, ports, airports, and machines. For example, an infrastructure is a form of physical capital when it facilitates the extraction of resources and the movement of these resources to productive facilities and markets. In the simplest societies, there is a low level of physical capital and technology. Spears, bow and arrows, fire pits, canoes or rafts, and baskets are an example of the forms of physical capital available to nomadic hunter-gatherers, which obviously is very different than the physical capital of an industrial or post-industrial society.

6.1 Reconceptualizing the Economy

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169

Human Capital

Human capital denotes the capacities, such as knowledge, behavior, motive states, and other characteristics of a person for gathering, producing, and distributing resources, products, and services within the units organizing economic activities in society. Human capital can operate at the individual level or at collective levels where a set of individuals contribute varying knowledge bases, motivations, skills, emotions, and other properties of human beings to economic processes. Human capital is also affected by how humans are organized; and so, human capital can also be viewed in terms of how efficiently and effectively individuals carry knowledge, use emotions, are organize and, when organized, how efficiently they act and behave.

6.1.4

Transactional Capital

As emphasize above, transactional capital is forms of currency and other financial instruments that facilitate exchanges of resources, products, and services. The most important form of transactional capital is a normatively accepted marker of value for buying and selling all products and services that are distributed within and between societies. Transactional capital provides actors the means to participate in markets. However, the general circulation of transactional capital is utilized to purchase physical capital and human capital for gathering resources, producing goods and services, and distributing goods and services within and between societies. And so, over the course of societal evolution, transactional capital became increasingly essential for developing labor and corporate actors in an economy as well as building infrastructure and physical facilities to house incumbents in social structures across institutional domains. As discussed in earlier chapters, the evolution of media of exchange began very early in human relations to find of common marker of value so that exchanges among actors in very simple societies could occur. Indeed, currency made possible the first geo-economic inter-societal systems; and once in play, currency would dramatically affect internal societal dynamics of societies as well. For example, bundles of colorful and rare seashells were used as “currency” of different denominations (e.g., stacking of shells to denote values) by one of the neighbors of the Wintu in Northern California or, more spectacularly, by the Chumash of Central California, which facilitated the buying and selling of resources among these populations (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). In the case of the Chumash, a very large inter-societal system was forged through using this medium of exchange across a very large geographical area, including Central California through Southern California and its offshore islands through what is now Riverside and San Bernadino counties to the Arizona and Mexican borders, and even beyond in a few places. As we have mentioned earlier,

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Chumash currency was composed of shells cut into wafers, that looked much like coins with a small hole in the middle and strung together in stacks of varying size that denote varying values. These stacks were used to “buy” something from another person or group. The shells operated like money because, in fact, they were the first form of money that was accepted by populations as a marker of respective values of “goods” and “products” in early exchanges and early market locations across a very large territory. Barter is the only other way to exchange goods without a medium of exchange. And this type of exchange is very limiting because sellers and buyers must negotiate and agree on the exchange value of the goods and resources in play. However, with a medium of exchange, sellers can take a standardized marker of value in exchange for goods and then use these cultural markers to “buy” other goods from different actors. And so, even though the Chumash were a comparatively small band of settled hunter-gatherers located along the coast of California, between Malibu and Paso Robles, as well as on the Northern Channel Islands, their currency spread far and wide through exchange networks for bulk and prestige goods. In fact, the Chumash actively manufactured their currency on the safe haven of Santa Cruz Island and leveraged their currency to pay debts to bands along the Northwest cost of California and to buy goods and services from bands in Southern California (Gamble 2020). In essence, the “minting” of money by the Chumash facilitated a simple but far reaching geo-economic system in which the Chumash were, in essence, the bankers. They determined the supply of money from the shells harvested and then manufactured by a division of labor on Santa Cruz island, which is the first such division of labor known for manufacturing among hunter-gatherers, although it is likely that this banking operation emerged long before the Chumash in other places on the globe. The evolution of geo-economic systems depends upon transactional capital. Initially, patterned geo-economic relations between societies require a medium of exchange (i.e., money) to sustain the direct trade of resources, products, and services between different populations. As markets emerge through these patterned exchanges, more sophisticated transactional capital is required. More specifically, the differentiation of markets requires an increasing number of “instruments” for facilitating exchanges in a wide variety of markets that were both horizontally differentiated by specialization and, even more importantly, hierarchical differentiated for exchanging the cultural markers of value used in lower-level markets. Thus, money itself becomes a commodity to be exchanged, then all other cultural markers of value–insurance contracts, stocks and bonds, futures, and now the mysterious derivatives—can be bought and sold in meta-markets. And as Braudel (1977) and Collins (1990) emphasized (Sect. 3.2.4), such meta-markets are often highly speculative and risky. Nonetheless, without money and its use in markets to denote value, an economy cannot be very robust or dynamic. However, in capitalist economies, transactional capital and other “instruments” carrying and marking value become commodities for higher-order markets.

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171

Property

Historically, the concept of property did not always exist for many physical or cultural objects, although the few personal objects that early humans possess were generally defined as their property. Thus, property is a concept that allows individuals and corporate units the right to possess physical and symbolic objects of value. However, the notion of “private property” was less pervasive in most pre-modern societies because much was collectively “owned.” For example, the hunting-gathering bands claimed “rights” over certain geographic locations, and kinships units in early horticulturalists societies “owned” plots of land vis-à-vis other plots of landed owned by other kin units within a society. The evolution of currency and other transactional capital as markers of value increasingly allowed for the assessment of value (in exchange or in holdings) of almost any dimension of the universe. And as societies grew and become more differentiated as well as unequal and stratified, an increasing number of “objects” were assigned value and became the property of individuals and corporate units of all kinds. And as transactional capital increased the diversity of markets, virtually anything could be defined by its market value and purchased for “ownership” by a person or corporate units. Of course, older forms of “possession” of objects persisted with the introduction of private property. For example, resources, goods, and services in territories conquered by super-ordinate societies in geo-political systems could be “owned” by leaders and/or corporate actors in super-ordinate society or by specific indigenous actors. Much would depend on the strategy of domination employed by a hegemon (see Table 4.1). Even humans as objects of value from these subordinate societies could be defined as property, thereby, could be bought and sold in slave or sex markets. Property can be owned by individuals and large corporate actors, such as governments who claim property in the name of the “people” or the name of a “society.” However, the collective ownership of resources, goods, and services is still about property based on its measured in value. Over time, and especially with the introduction of capitalism, both physical and non-physical resources have become privately or collectively owned as property. For example, more ephemeral objects like broadcasting along waves in spectrums that could not be seen or heard for most of human history are now “private” property of a corporate units. Although ownership may also reside in a larger collective unit, like the government, which then “rents” the property rights out for a specific sum of money and for a specified duration. Thus, once the money can place a value on all dimensions of the universe —physical, biological, digital, and social—it can become property to be bought and sold in markets.

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Structural Formations

Almost every society in human history has engaged in some form of trade with other societies, sometimes in locations that had market characteristic and, moreover, sometimes using an early form of money, thus revealing some features of the economy that were differentiated from kinship corporate units. In the earliest societies, economic activity was defined by individuals (a) engaging in hunting and gathering of resources, (b) converting these into “products” for consumption, and (c) distributing these “products” among members of a population. And for much of human history, economic activity was not differentiated from kinship and was embedded in the corporate units constituting a kinship system. From the nuclear family and band of hunter-gathers to the unilineal descent systems of early and some late horticulturalists, communities, plots of land, gardening activities, and distribution of food were embedded in kinship structural formations. The embedding of the economy in kinship restricted the productive capacity of early economies. Differentiation of distinctive corporate units outside of kinship and the elaboration of these units into distinct “economic” organizations were critical for the evolution of economies and societies more generally. Both polity and religion had begun to differentiate from kinship before the economy, but differentiation of the economy from kinship in more advanced horticulture and early agrarianism introduced new types of corporate and market formations, thereby setting the stage for economic evolution and the eventual emergence of capitalism. Structural formations refer to the way in which the three basic types of corporate units—that is, groups, organizations, and communities—were integrated to create an ever more autonomous institutional domain, the economy. Table 6.1 describes the ways in which corporate units can be linked together to create institutional domains. These are, in this sense, “entrepreneurial” in the more general sense of providing the structural base for bringing technology and other cultural systems like money and ideologies, capital in all its manifestations (physical, human, and transactional), and physical structures together and, thereby, organizing gathering, producing, and distributing. For economies to become dynamic, there needs to be differentiation of corporate units for the three basic economic processes—i.e., gathering, producing, and distributing. This was only possible when most economic corporate units were differentiated from kinship and any other institutional domains, such as religion and polity, that had often organized much economic activity right up and through to the Holocene. Not only is differentiation necessary, but the modes of integration among corporate outlined in Table 6.1 must exist for economies to be more dynamic. The potential forms of integration among corporate units in Table 6.1 are important for explaining differences in the profile of economies and patterns of geo-economic relations in inter-societal systems. Markets with a medium of exchange were a powerful force in the differentiation of corporate units dedicated to organizing the gathering, production, and distribution of resources, products, and services. Thus, markets with a medium exchange were equally powerful in creating

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Table 6.1 Modes of organization among corporate unit organization within institutional domains 1. Segmentation and Equivalence: The reproduction of similar social structures and cultures among corporate units, thereby creating high levels of structural and cultural equivalence among corporate units within an institutional sphere 2. Structural Differentiation: The creation of new types of corporate units within an institutional sphere, with somewhat different patterns in their divisions of labor, goals, and cultures A Structural Interdependence: The formation of regularized exchange relations among corporate units within an institutional sphere with mechanisms for human, symbolic, and material resources across corporate units with similar or differentiated structures and/or cultures B Structural Inclusion: The successive embedding of smaller corporate units within larger corporate units within an institutional sphere, and at times across spheres, with the structure and culture of the more inclusive units constraining the embedded units, and at times, with the embedded units generating pressures for change in the structure and culture of more embedded units C Structural Overlap: The intersection of at least portions of one corporate unit with another or several other corporate units, thereby generating intersections among structural and cultural features of multiple corporate units that work to reduce the salience of differences among the categories of incumbents in their respective divisions of labor and cultures attached to the memberships in diverse categories and divisions of labor (thus, increasing pressures for segmentation and structural and cultural equivalences among overlapping corporate units) D Structural Mobility: The movement within and between corporate units within and between institutional spheres, thereby increasing rates of interaction and creating many of the same pressures for segmentation generated by structural overlap 3. Structural Segregation: The separation in time and space of corporate units, with clear entrance and exit rules, about who can enter or leave the corporate unit, and when, thereby insulating structural and cultural features of segregated corporate units from other corporate units within an institutional sphere 4. Structural Domination: The mobilization and use of power within one corporate unit or a coalition of corporate units to control other corporate units within and, at times, across institutional spheres, thereby imposing structural and cultural features of dominant corporate units on subordinate corporate units

inter-societal systems based on the exchange of resources, goods, and services from the very beginnings of human societies to the rise of capitalism. Markets continue to be a fundamental driving force behind the development of contemporary inter-societal systems, although geo-politics has always been part of geo-economic relations in the past and, no doubt, today and into the future (as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has demonstrated). Indeed, it is the intersection of geo-economics and geo-politics that has historically driven much of economic and, more generally, societal, and inter-societal evolution. Initially, this interplay of geo-economic and geo-political forces was the driving force behind the differentiation of an autonomous economy from kinship, polity, and religion. The evolution of markets further differentiated corporate units and their relations in

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resource extraction (gathering), production (resource conversion into goods and products), and distribution of products within and between societies. The patterns of corporate-unit differentiation and integration that occur within and between societies determine the profile of the economy within a society, as well as the structure of geo-economic relations among societies.

6.1.7

Cultural Formations

Cultural systems are always attached to social structures because culture evolves to regulate social relations among individuals and the organization of corporate units in their activities, while legitimating social stratification systems. Moreover, culture is important because it embodies technology as the driving force of any economy. For, as noted above, technology is knowledge, which is a fundamental dimension of all cultures, about how to manipulate the environment. Therefore, culture is a fundamental driver of economies because technology expands or constrains the size and structure of economic activity as well as most other social structures as well. In addition to technologies, there are other critical cultural elements that affect economies and economic action. One is the generalized symbolic medium of economies, which eventually becomes money or quasi money as evident since the earliest inter-societal systems of hunter-gatherers. Again, currency emerged early in human evolution because it was essential for expanding and regularizing resource exchange among pre-literate populations. While bartering was a prominent form of exchange among early human societies, this form of exchange is limiting because, as noted earlier, both seller and buyer must negotiate and agree upon the equivalence of goods and services. With a generalized medium of exchange—e.g., money or currency—this constraint of barter is removed, and exchange can be more dynamic and voluminous eventually leading to the evolution of patterned geo-economic relations between societies. The emergence of generalized medium of exchange also accelerates the evolution of corporate units whose incumbents can be rewarded with a “cool” generalized symbolic media like money (compared to “hot” symbolic media like “love/ loyalty” (kinship) or “sacredness/piety” (religion). This new form of rewarding incumbents frees corporate-unit organization from the constraints and limitations of utilizing other “hot” generalized symbolic media like love/loyalty in kinship and piety/sacredness in religion (see Table 1.2). And until a neutral medium of exchange such as money could be developed, rational-legal bureaucracies could not be constructed and used to organize an economy because payments for labor in differentiated positions in a hierarchy of authority cannot be easily calibrated. The emergence of money also changed the ideologies of economies since these belief systems are built from each institutional domain’s generalized symbolic medium. As a result, the cultural systems of societies evolved as economic action was increasingly oriented to the accumulation of money that, in turn, would provide individuals and corporate actors with both material and symbolic power (Lotz

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2014). Accordingly, the “culture of money” reshaped not only the ideology guiding economic action, but also the values, meta-ideologies, generalized-ideologies, stocks of knowledge, texts, and other elements of general culture in a society (see Fig. 1.3) and, eventually, in inter-societal systems. The institutional domains within a society change once money, markets, and legitimating ideologies of economic action take hold. Moreover, geo-economic relations between societies change with the flow of money. Indeed, the subordination of societies in inter-societal systems is designed to limit the effects of money, markets, and new liberal ideologies on the culture of subordinate societies. Domination depends upon the more traditional cultures and social structures of subordinate societies to remain in place which perpetuates underdevelopment and geo-economic dependence on super-ordinate societies (Frank 1967; Wallerstein 1974). For a time, this strategy works but it also creates tensions and problems that, eventually, dismantle such exploitive relations, especially as competitors emerge to challenge hegemonic societies. Only when there are no competing societies to the domination of a hegemon can such dependency and exploitive patterns of domination endure. Still, the culture of capitalism or any economy using money will, in the end, spread from one society to another in a geo-economic system, even one that is highly exploitive. The culture of economic actors, and often political and religious actors, diffuses along the infrastructures of geo-economic inter-societal systems. Just how fast, much, and far culture of super-ordinate societies diffuses among the populations of the societies in a geo-economic system varies with the economic or political strategy of domination (see Table 4.1 on page 112). For example, a “plantation” strategy works to reduce cultural transfers, whereas the boarder based “colonial” strategy inevitably leads to the formation of a geo-cultural system and the eradication local cultures in subordinate societies. Drawing on Wallerstein’s conceptualization of semi-peripheral society, the culture of core societies that penetrates societies in the periphery begins to alter the nature of its institutional domains, which may lead upward mobility of a would-be semi-peripheral society in the core-periphery hierarchy. This may explain the observed mobility of some societies from the periphery to the semi-periphery and the semi-periphery to the core (Clark 2016; Mahutga and Smith 2011). Accordingly, the mobility and power dynamics of geo-economic systems is very much related to the flow culture between super-ordinate and subordinate societies. And as changes in the culture of dependent societies ensue, the nature of the geo-economic inter-societal system will also change (as will the geo-political system, if coercive force has been used to prop up the geo-economic domination). This inevitability in the flow of culture, once a geo-economic (and geo-political) inter-societal system is in place is the reason that we will include in the next chapter some thoughts on the dynamics of geo-cultural inter-societal systems.

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6 Geo-Economic Dynamics

Models and Principles of Geo-Economic Dynamics Basic Economic Forces

Figure 6.1 presents a general model of the economic forces driving the formation of economies and the macro-structural profile of societies in a geo-economic inter-societal system. As discussed above, the nature of the geo-economic system is dependent upon the elements of economies and their effects on the two basic pillars of societies: (1) the development of institutional systems, especially their level of differentiation and relative autonomy from each other (Abrutyn and Turner 2022) and (2) the development of stratification systems formed by the unequal distribution of the generalized symbolic media by corporate units in each institutional domain a society (see Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). For example, the formation of super-ordinate-subordinate relations between two or more societies in a geo-economic system is contingent on the loadings of the economic elements since these elements determine the structure and culture of institutional and stratification systems from which societies are constructed. In turn, the institutional and stratification systems of super-ordinate and subordinate societies determine the degree of inter-societal stratification between dominant and subordinate societies in a geo-economic system. The elements of economy are all positively connected such that the higher the values for any one of the forces involved—i.e., resource extraction, production, and distribution of the goods, products, and services—the greater the values for the others as they feed-forward and feedback on each other. In the general model, we include an important variable in this set of causal relations—the level of infrastructure development. As we outlined in Chap. 1, cultural, social structural, and infrastructural systems are the three most important elements in explaining societies and inter-societal systems. If the level of any of the economic elements is low, then the level of resource extraction, production, distribution, and infrastructure development will also be low. Correspondingly, the levels of institutional differentiation and degree of inequality will be lower because less is being produced to distribute unequally. For example, the low value of technology among nomadic hunter-gatherers organized in simple structural formations—nuclear kinship and band—is associated with lower levels of cultural and structural complexity as well as capital, market, and property formation. In turn, the levels of resource extraction, production, distribution, and infrastructural development were low in nomadic hunter-gathering societies. These societies were not only trapped in nuclear families and bands as their basic structural formations, but they also revealed extremely low levels of stratification that, in turn, would slow the development of a differentiated polity. As a result, the geo-economic systems among hunter-gathering societies were relatively simple and the formation of geo-political systems was relatively modest. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, the emergence of the polity among settled hunter-gatherers through institutional differentiation, instigates

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geo-political forces and dynamics which affect geo-economic relations among settled hunter-gatherer societies. And the evolution of horticultural, fishing, and pastoral practices among these settled societies increases the economic elements outlined in Fig. 6.1, which leads to infrastructural development, productivity, and trade between settled populations. More importantly, increasing productivity and trade along with the development of local infrastructure further differentiates institutional systems in settled hunter-gathering societies with the increasing prominence of evidence of distinctly economic, political, and religious action and the growing autonomy of the economy, polity, and religion from kinship. This increasing differentiation of institutional systems contributes to the emergence of inequality and differentiated stratification systems which constitutes the second pillar of societies. The development and evolution of differentiated institutional and stratification systems resulted in the formation of geo-economic systems with a degree of inequality between societies, and at the same time, an increasing level of geo-politics interwoven into geo-economic relations. Moreover, once humans began to settle, population growth would ensue, thereby generating selection pressures that would eventually push for higher values for all key economic processes. Hence, in this sense, the economy was transformed from an institution inhibiting societal evolution to one that would, over many thousands of years, become one of the driving forces of societal and inter-societal evolution This simple and yet general model of economic forces can explain the dynamics of more complex geo-economic inter-societal systems. The complexity of geo-economic systems is determined by the relative degree of productivity, institutional differentiation, and stratification. For example, a highly complex geo-economic system will emerge between highly productive societies (e.g., industrial and post-industrial) with high levels of institutional differentiation and inequalities around different categoric units. In this complex system, the more productive society, especially when coupled with a large coercive force, may have some advantage in geo-economic relations with other societies. However, it is unlikely for a hegemonic society to emerge in the system since other societies are less likely to be dependent on another society given equivalence in their productivity, institutional differentiation, and levels of stratification. Instead, geo-economic relations among societies in this complex system are primarily based on mutual exchanges, although geo-politics can affect the continuity and nature of exchange relations where a more hegemonic relationship may emerge through the utilization of coercive power. It is important to note that inequalities between societies in both geo-political and geo-economic inter-societal systems have existed for much of human history since the Holocene. In some cases, economic advantage leads to domination, but more often it has been the respective polities and the coercive advantage of one society over another that leads to domination, as was outlined in the previous chapter. Here, economic advantages refer to higher levels or values of the elements shown in Fig. 6.1 and outlined above. Under these conditions, an economically advantaged society can form potentially dependent and exploitive geo-economic

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relations with other societies, although these usually have to be backed up by coercive force. One final note on the causal dynamics outlined in the model presented in Fig. 6.1 is the reverse causal arrows are critical for explaining and understanding dynamism of economies within societies. As denoted by the reverse causal arrows moving from right to left in the model, increases in the elements of an economy associated with higher levels of resource extraction, production, distribution, and infrastructure which then feedbacks into these elements which further increases economic activities, institutional differentiation, and stratification. Additionally, the integration of societies into a geo-economic inter-societal system constitutes another set of feedback effects that impacts the elements of an economy, economic activity, and the development of institutional and stratification systems. In turn, institutional differentiation, and emergence of stratification systems in any society will affect the dynamics of the economy, per se, or via integration into geo-economic relations as a super-ordinate, subordinate, or equal participant in an inter-societal system. Given this general model, we are able to elaborate on this model and develop propositions on varying those forms of geo-economic inter-societal relations that have emerged historically (as listed in Table 4.1 on p 112).

6.2.2

Dependency in Geo-Economic Relations

Modeling Dependency. Before Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1979) first presented his model of the modern world system in the 1970s, dependency theorizing by scholars such as Frank (1969, 1978, 1979) had been challenging “modernization theory” that had dominated much analysis in the 1950s and 1960s (see Sect. 2.3.2). As discussed in Chap. 2, dependency theory was at its core an exchange theory based on applying Marx’s concept of exploitation to a stratified world system of the center dominating the periphery. In fact, Marxist theorizing at its core is an exchange theory that argues the likelihood of conflict increases as individuals, families, and eventually a whole class of individuals (the “proletariat”) become aware of the unequal exchange between super-ordinate and subordinate classes (e.g., capitalist and proletariats). However, as discussed in Chap. 2, dependency theory primarily focuses on the modern world-system (the capitalist world economy) and largely ignores non-capitalist inter-societal systems. In contrast, we seek to develop a model of dependency dynamics among societies that can be applied to pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems. Figure 6.2 presents a general model of geo-economic dependency in an inter-societal system. The fundamental variable behind the emergence of geo-economic dependency is access to technologies. The inability to access and utilize technology in a society reduces the level of resource extraction, production, and capital formation that, together, determines the development of infrastructure and the degree of stratification. Drawing on the work of Gerhard Lenski (2005; see Sect. 3.2.6), we contend that the evolution of societies and inter-societal systems is

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dependent on the discovery of new technologies which, in turn, alter the means of production and the nature of distribution and the infrastructures on which market distributions flow. For example, the logistic and digital infrastructure developed by earlier retailers (e.g., Sears) permitted the discovery and development of new digital technologies (e.g., e-commerce) that fundamentally changed the distribution of goods and the dynamics of retail markets in post-industrial economies across the world. The model in Fig. 6.2 identifies how values of each variable are important for determining the relationship with other variables. Starting with the level of technology, we emphasize that “low” access to technology is key to level of resource extraction, production, and capital formation. Lower levels of economic activity reduce access to technology, all of which produces a negative feedback loop that perpetuates underdevelopment. And these feedback effects in the model are important for determining the likelihood of dependency. For example, the negative effects of low technology on economic activity reverberate through the model and lower the values of the other variables which leads to control by “external actors” of a geo-economic system (see bold-faced box at far-right side in Fig. 6.2). As stated above, a low level of technology in a society reduces levels of capital formation, resource extraction, production, and distribution, which in turn, dampen the effects of these basic economic processes on infrastructural development and knowledge-institutional domains like education (and science). The consequence is that lower-technology societies, that have evolved a polity organized by state actors, tend to rely on coercive and symbolic (ideologies) bases of power, accompanied by high levels of corruption and an unequal distribution of resources that favors higher classes and impoverishes lower classes while devaluing members of categoric units (as a manifestation of incentive base of power-use). However, in stateless societies, low levels of technology will block high levels consolidated power of any kind, as was the case, we would imagine, for several hundred thousand years for humans. As discussed in the previous chapter, the emergence Big Men in some settled hunter-gathering populations and, later, the evolution of unilineal descent system of horticulturalist, initiated the emergence of the polity as an institutional domain. Stateless societies are vulnerable in any relationships– geo-political, geo-economic, or geo-cultural—with societies that have evolved a state-based polity. Therefore, stateless societies started to disappear during the Holocene, with the last remnants of such societies rapidly disappearing in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Dependent societies in the capitalist world economy have been vulnerable to larger societies invading their territories for both geo-economic and geo-political domination. However, the evolution of global capitalism over the last couple of centuries fundamentally altered geo-economic relations and the nature of dependency. Exploitive geo-economic relations between dependent and dominant societies in the capitalist world economy were facilitated by the dynamics in the left side of the model in Fig. 6.2 where dependent societies relied upon a limited set of external actors for importing key a resource and/or a exporting their narrow range of products. In these situations, dominant economic actors often pursed a strategy of

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isolating dependent societies from other economic actors which, in turn, further increased dependency and permitted economic actors from the dominant society to exploit resource extraction from dependent societies (i.e., unequal exchange). The strategy of these dominant actors included corrupting political officials in polity and rewarding domestic elites to maintain low wages and lower prices for raw resources. Part of this strategy also included geo-political dynamics whereby the polity of a dominant society would use its coercive power to keep weaker polities and their geo-economic actors in line, especially when accompanied by incentives like bribes of key economic and political actors in the dependent society. Another part of the strategy was to develop limited infrastructures to move targeted products and/or resources from dependent societies to dominate societies. This strategic development in key economic sectors and logistic infrastructure ensured gains from dependent-led development primarily rewarded economic and political elites in dependent societies (Kentor 1998; Dixon and Boswell 1996; Bornschier and Chase-Dunn 1985; Evans and Timberlake 1980). We labeled this strategy as a “plantation” form of geo-economic domination in Table 4.1. Overall, this strategy required a large surplus of low-wage workers and a small set of domestic elites. In underdeveloped societies with a wealth of valuable natural resources, this “plantation” strategy includes the production and distribution of agricultural products, raw minerals, oil and other mining products, and/or simple industrial products (e.g., textiles). Accordingly, the key to this strategy is to: (1) find underdeveloped societies with limited economic activity and weak bases of power; (2) reward domestic actors (owners, managers, and politicians) with bribes and payments to administrate the extraction of capital and resources from their economies; and (3), if necessary, utilize coercive power to limit geo-economic relations between the dependent society and other hegemonic societies. In many ways, the lack of development in societies subject to this strategy operates to isolate them, at least it has during much of the last 500 years. If most sectors of a dependent society are poor, and if there is only one or two key “industries” extracting resources or actually producing products, such societies are isolated in geo-economic systems today and can be vulnerable to the exploitation by dominant economic actors (e.g., multinational corporations). Yet, as capitalism has spread over the last century, and as distributional technologies and infrastructures have expanded (e.g., container shipping, high-speed transportation, and warehouse complexes), most societies are now able to gain access to broader markets in the world economy, if actors in these societies have valued resources or products to sell. Absent geo-political dynamics, isolation is more difficult to impose and, increasingly, requires a somewhat different strategy. However, this alternative strategy typically works to help a poor society develop. Specifically, more developed societies may invest in dependent societies to build infrastructure and technologies to extract valuable resources and expand the production capacity of domestic firms. For example, as a former colony, Vietnam was heavily exploited during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, recent foreign investment has greatly expanded the industrial capacity of Vietnam which has led to

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substantial economic growth through export-oriented manufacturing. Overall, as markets for almost everything have gone global, enforcing dependency in a highly competitive world—both geo-economically and geo-politically—is increasingly difficult to bring off. New strategies of geo-economics have thus evolved, especially over the last 70 years. These strategies increasingly revolve around more equitable trade relations that are mediated by complex and vast global markets. As Arrighi (2007) contends, the rapid growth of China through market-led development reconfigured geo-economic relations in the capitalist world economy. More importantly, this demonstrated that formerly dependent societies are capable of ascending in the international hierarchy by engaging state-led development and the formation of new economic relations. Thus, the increasing marketization of the world economy and the emergence of new development models demonstrates the evolution of geo-economic strategies for domination and fostering dependence in the twenty-first century. Elementary Propositions of Dependency in Geo-Economic Inter-Societal Systems. We are now in a position to outline two theoretical propositions on the basic processes of dependency and stratification in geo-economic inter-societal systems. Table 6.2 presents two fundamental propositions about dependency and stratification in geo-economic inter-societal systems. In most geo-economic systems, actors in dominant societies seeking resources from other societies have been able to effectively isolate these societies from intervention by other geo-economic and geo-political actors. This type of dynamic emerged in inter-societal systems composed of agrarian societies where there was uneven development of infrastructures across societies, especially in modes of transportation over bodies of water, ecological barriers (e.g., deserts or mountains), and long distances. Dominate societies in Europe, such as Venice, the Dutch Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, England, and France used their strategic geographic positions and their technological and infrastructural capacities to navigate the globe. The utilization of advanced cargo ships and naval power provided the means for these societies to gain early access to resources in Central and East Asia, the Americas, and Africa. Indeed, some of these societies, such as India and China, were more economically and culturally advanced compared to these European societies that were re-emerging politically but, more importantly, economically from the vacuum following the decline and collapse of the Roman empire. The rapid technological and infrastructural development in European societies coupled with a geo-economic and political strategy of colonialism gave them an advantage in seeking resources and controlling other territories through the utilization of different bases of power. Over time, this colonial strategy of geo-economic and political domination instigated a series of wars where these dominant societies utilized their power to hold at bay potential competitors. Much of this is the frequent warfare between these societies over access to the resources of other societies around the globe did not primarily occur in each other’s territories surrounding their home base, but rather in the external territories of societies in other parts of the world and region.

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Table 6.2 Propositions on the probability of dependency and degree of stratification in geo-economic systems 1. The probability of a geo-economic system in which one society can engage in exploitive exchange relations with another society that is dependent on this exploitive society for valued resources is an additive function of: A Low levels of technology in the dependent society B Low levels of infrastructural development in the dependent society with respect to: (i) extraction and gathering of resources from the environment, (ii) productive processes for converting resources into goods and commodities, (iii) differentiated markets and meta-markets for distribution of goods, commodities, and services in the dependent society, which, in turn, is a multiplicative function of the low levels of capital formation, with respect to: 1. Physical capital 2. Human capital 3. Transactional capital C Low levels of development and differentiation in the dependent society with respect to (i) markets for distributing goods and services and (ii) meta-markets for distributing forms of transactional capital in the form of money, equities, bonds, and other financial instruments for amassing capital D Definitions of property in the dependent society that favor only small elite actors, individual and corporate, thereby creating high levels of inequality in access to value resources, which increases with: 1. Low levels or narrow forms of economic development 2. Low levels of development of educational institutional systems and access to generalized symbolic media like knowledge 3. High level elite corruption 4. The conditions listed above under 1-A, 1-B, and 1-C E The lack of a large population in dependent society that could attract economic actors seeking (i) sources of inexpensive labor and/or (ii) consumers for products by these actors that, in turn, would increase aggregate incomes and hence demand in markets from the indigenous population and/or capital investments in productive structural formations (e.g., manufacturing plants, infrastructures) and cultural transfers such as technology, generalized media of exchange (money and other financial instruments), ideologies, and normative systems F The lack of alternative sources for resources supplied by the exploitive society to the exploited society, which, in turn, is a multiplicative function of: 1. The conditions specified in 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, and 1D above 2. The lack of a strategic position in global and regional in geo-political competition among hegemonic societies 3. The lack of consolidated power across all bases of power that could reduce dependency on more power societies and that could generate capital formation and broad-based economic development, which is a multiplicative function of: a. The conditions listed under 1-A, 1-B, 1-C, 1-D, 1-E, and 1-F above b. The lack of tax base and/or corruption in formulas of taxation that would allow for domestic development of institutional systems, particularly education, economy, and polity, thereby creating domestic sources of all forms of capital formation (physical, human, and transactional) and technology transfers (continued)

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Table 6.2 (continued) c. The lack of investment in societal-level infrastructures, which is a function of 1-B and 1-C d. The lack of a scarce resource or resources that would attract multiple hegemonic societies that, in turn, could be played off each other to provide infrastructure, income, and technology transfers to a dependent society, thereby initiating the dynamics specified in proposition (2) above e. Corruption among polity and existing entrepreneurs who are willing to trade off personal financial gains from dominant societies against gains for a larger base of the population and for broader-based institutional development in a dependent society that would increase the bargain power of a dependent society 2. The persistence of geo-economic inequality and stratification among societies in an intersocietal system is a positive function of (1-A through 1-F) above and a negative function of the capacity to develop balancing strategies for more equal exchanges between dependent and dominant societies, with this capacity increasing with: A Doing without the resources from external actors and developing domestic means for securing these resources B Finding alternative sources for resources from other societies, and then playing these multiple sources against each other to balance the exchange C Mobilizing coercive power, whether by the polity or revolutionary factions of the indigenous population, to challenge existing patterns of domination by economic or political actors from other societies D Providing alternative resources to external powers that are scarce and needed by these powers, which increases when: 1. A dependent society is located at a favorable geo-economic location needed or desired by external economic actors 2. A dependent society is located in a favorable geo-political location needed or desired by external political actors 3. The capacity of the polity in a dependent society to hold off with its own coercive forces the coercive forces of dominant societies and, thereby, negotiate with geo-economic actors without threats of intervention by coercive forces of dominant societies which increases under 1-C above 4. The capacity of polity or economic actors in dependent societies to threaten or engage in active pursuit of geo-economic and/or geo-political relations with other dominant societies 5. The capacity of polity or economic actors in dependent societies to reduce the alternatives for resources for dominant societies, thereby making increasing the dependence of the dominant society on the resources provided by the dependent society and, in so doing, rebalancing the exchange

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The propositions in Table 6.2 describe geo-economic dynamics and relations over the last 2,000 years and, more accurately, the last 500 years which is often the defining period for the evolution of capitalism and the modern world system. Geo-economic systems were rarely purely economic during this period. There was always the mobilization of power to threaten underdeveloped societies, such as those in the Americas and even more advanced societies (e.g., India and China) that were as developed in their coercive capacities on land and sea as were the emerging societies of Western Europe. For example, the East India Company, charted by Queen Elizabeth, on the last day of the 1600 century, was able to literally ransack the wealth of India for hundreds of years before being reined in by the British Government, which also shared in “looting”1 India of its vast wealth and, to a lesser extent, parts of China. Most importantly, the activities of the East India Company were generally protected by the British Navy against potential competitors such as Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, and French. And while the East India Company was just that—a quasi-private company under charter by the Queen and later other members of the Royal Family—it had also created its own army composed of its agents and staff in foreign countries that was twice the size of the British army, numbering hundreds of thousands of combatants that looted India and other societies of Asia of their wealth. Some of this wealth as appropriated, in the form of “profits” and “booty”, to the East India Company and its leaders as well as to the British crown which, at the time, was desperately in need of money in the 17th and 18th. This fusion of geo-economic and political actors represented an important dynamic driving the rise and fall of hegemonic powers during the rise of capitalism (Arrighi 1994). The enactment of this colonial strategy over a several hundred-year period retarded the development of societies in Asia through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. And these societies only started to re-develop during the nineteenth and twentieth Centuries up until the present. The rapid development of East and Central Asian societies over the last hundred years has been remarkable, with China ascending to a dominant position in the geo-political and geo-economic systems of today (Arrighi 2007). Of course, the United States as well as other dominant societies also evolved from its colonization by mostly Britain but on a continent where most of the indigenous populations were hunter-gatherers or horticulturalist that inhabited these territories for at least 25,000 years. In fact, the ascension of the United States was partially driven by its colonial expansion into the territories of indigenous populations where the U.S. government provided land (stolen from the aboriginals) to private companies (e.g., Union Pacific) and supported their operations with military force. During the latter phase of colonialism, the British government absorbed the East India Company by de-chartering it and repurposing their organization and its The word “loot” is not English but Indian and means to ransack or pillage in the language of India, which describes what the East India company did in India and later in China, where it used money from opium sales to, in essence, create Hong Kong as an international center for exchange which, only in the last years, has been “taken back” fully by the Chinese government.

1

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operations as tool for British geo-economic domination. At the same time, other European societies were also engaged in similar activities around the world, seeking new and exploitive geo-economic relations that were supported by military force. This transition in geo-economic strategies of domination instigated new formations in geo-economic systems based on changing relations between European powers and their former colonies. More specifically, actors in dominant European societies became more active and invested in the development of infrastructures and the economies of colonies, as well as imposing new forms of political bureaucracies, and in some cases law and education (see Table 4.1). The result was somewhat less exploitive exchanges of resources and goods between societies and the emergence of infrastructure, markets, and meta-markets in some of the more developed colonies. The development of colonies induced social movements that resisted foreign powers controlling the polity and much of the economy (Martin 2008). As a result, revolts and other acts of resistance began to expose the fragility of colonial strategies of domination and the ability of a foreign power to control societies from a long distance. Put simply, the emergence of movements for self-determination and nationalism exposed a fundamental truth about geo-political and economic control by European powers: Their home-base population was too small to control the much larger populations, such as in India and China or, as was eventually the case with Spanish in Latin America as grew too large and, hence, was too expensive to control. However, dependency persisted in geo-economic relations, especially with Latin American and Caribbean societies. The decline of colonial strategies of domination, as a form of geo-economic and geo-political control, induced a shift in relations toward a number of patterns listed at the bottom of Table 4.1. This shift was both the stimulus for, and the result of, the worldwide expansion of capitalism and the formation of less exploitive geo-economic relations that have decreased world-level inequalities and increased the extractive, productive, and distributive capacities of many societies. Nonetheless, inequality between societies persist, but the progressive development of societies in the “Global South” from agrarian to industrial has induced a decline in international inequality (Sala-i-Martin 2002; Firebaugh 2003). The continuation of downward trend in international inequality remains unclear. Whether such will still be the case in 50 years is uncertain, especially as the problem of global warming creates new ecological challenges to some of the poorest societies. This problem may be so great that geo-economic systems of capitalism or socialism (of any kind) will be inadequate for resolving environmental degradation, climate change, and other emerging problems (e.g., Wallerstein 2003). In fact, we may witness the “devolution” of inter-societal systems back toward more regionally bounded geo-economic and geo-political formations. However, predicting the trajectory of inter-societal systems is too difficult given the current state of theory and empirical analysis on these systems.

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Modern Patterns of Geo-Economic Relations

Patterns of colonial control in geo-economic systems were important for the development of infrastructures for resource extraction, refining and manufacturing into more finished products, and transporting resources and products from colonized societies to the home base of dominant societies or for distribution in emerging international markets. The sequence of hegemonic warfare during the colonial period (Eighty Years’ War, World War I, and World War II) and corresponding global recessions and depression dramatically reshaped geo-economic activity and relations. During these episodic events, economic exchange among allied societies at war expanded as hegemonic powers sought allegiances and alliances from blocks of societies More specifically, hegemonic powers provided preferential trade and investment terms with allies while also providing these societies with substantial economic and military aid. As a result, infrastructures rapidly expand across societies, despite widespread destruction from wars. Moreover, hegemonic warfare and the emergence of new forms of geo-economic relations expanded transportation infrastructure and the capacity to move very large shipments of goods (e.g., heavy armaments) across extended territories which, in turn, created the requisite conditions for the development of international markets and highly dynamic geo-economic relations. The technology of warfare was critical for the development of key transportation technologies during the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. For example, the logistical demands of warfare increased knowledge about moving greater quantities of goods with larger container ships. And, once the container ships became regulated by computerized systems, the speed in transporting bulk goods accelerated. This new transportation technology and resulting infrastructure (e.g., ports with heavy equipment and computerized systems of control and coordination) were essential for the formation of dense networks of production that fragmented commodity chains across the globe. Modern day container ships, ports, and road and train systems are the backbone of the world economy and permit vast supply chains for a wide array of products. Other types of ships carrying oil, propane, and other types of fuels could similarly move rapidly at over 20 knots across oceans to refineries or, if already refined, to distribution points in any society. And increasingly, oil and gas through long transcontinental pipelines bypasses the needs for ships in many cases. And depending upon the society, a network of roads and rails could increasingly move heavy cargos to markets for distribution. In all these changes over the last 70 years, infrastructure has been a driving force, not only responding the expanding markets but, often, generating these markets. The development of inter-societal infrastructures with new technologies has been matched by the development of infrastructure within societies. For example, distribution centers receiving cargo are increasingly short-term stops as goods and products are unloaded at one side of a warehouse moved immediately to the other side where waiting train cars or trucks are ready to take these products to retail

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outlets that, themselves, are driven by computers taking inventory and even making purchases via computer networks for replacement inventory, often without consulting human beings. And of course, the revolution of rapid delivery to customers at their homes, the most recent revolution in infrastructures, is changing the nature of retail markets in the developed world. Throughout the twentieth century these changes were unfolding, but in the last third of the century, the infrastructure for inter-societal and intra-societal distribution has moved to new levels, dramatically increasing the speed, volume, and varieties of resources and goods that can be moved across land and oceans to markets that have extended geo-economic inter-societal relations across the globe to create what seems like a true “world system.” This transformation in the transportation of bulk goods was possible by the underlying technologies of infrastructures. As emphasized above, these inventions have dramatically accelerated the volume and variety of products that can be moved to distribution outlets feeding new kinds of corporate-unit structures in new kinds of retail markets, also increasingly organized by computer technologies. Of course, airplanes accelerate movement of critical and lighter goods at close the speed of sound, but it is the transportation of bulk goods, that has revolutionized economic activities and relations between societies.2 Technological advancement from warfare has thus changed the fundamental nature of distribution infrastructures of societies and inter-societal systems. As we emphasized in Chap. 1, infrastructure is critical for understanding societal and inter-societal dynamics. For example, the first pathways cut out for walking from one society to another revolutionized early societies by allowing trade and exchange of valued resources. The relations formed between these societies created information networks (for movement of culture), bulk goods networks (for moving commodities like salt, obsidian), prestige networks (for moving objects marking status), and, with the emergence of polities, military networks (for moving power and authority across societies). As the technologies for transportation gradually improved, the scale of societies and scope of relationships among them increased. The monumental systems that is today’s infrastructures may make these early infrastructural inventions seem insignificant. Yet, the earliest forms of transportation infrastructure, such as paths, through territories were the real breakthrough, even in low technology societies hundreds of thousands of years ago. For, in the end, evolution of societies and especially inter-societal systems is only possible by the progressive building up of infrastructures. Infrastructural developments are always built upon earlier ones that change the nature of how to move people, armies, hard goods, prestige goods, culture, and power across societies. Still, infrastructure will only expand to a point without market development. And markets cannot work long distances and across societies unless there are market services such as banking, accounting, insuring,

2

Chase-Dunn and Hall (1993) emphasize this point in their comparative world-systems framework.

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warehousing, and retailing. Moreover, markets require a viable medium of exchange and, eventually, meta-markets for buying and selling related products such as stocks, financing packages, insurance premiums, shares of inventories and cargos, and other instruments sustaining the value of money as the medium of exchange. These changes in the development of infrastructure and markets also create the physical structures (e.g., buildings, factories, warehouses, ports, airports, cocks, etc.) necessary to house new types of corporate units, mostly organizations constructed from groups located in communities. And these changes increasing the evolution of new types of corporate units require cultural symbols—money as a symbolic marker of value, norms to regulate conduct, ideologies to legitimate conduct and patters of social and physical organization, as well as the distribution of power and money to make these operate efficiently. We have emphasized these developments because they have had a huge impact on geo-economic and geo-political dynamics. They have increasingly connected societies into a global geo-economic system, while also facilitating the emergence of capitalist modes of production. In fact, even societies ideologically opposed to capitalism (e.g., China) need to become capitalist actors in world markets. Moreover, the introduction of the “profit motive” for economic action induced actors to reduce the costs of production in order to make a profit (from Marx’s famous formulation in Capital), which forces these actors to seek out investment in underdeveloped societies which are subject to the propositions outlined in Table 6.2. However, market competition over investment in the production capacity of underdeveloped societies (e.g., building factories, roads, and ports) increases the incentive to “cut costs” by employing “cheap labor” in underdeveloped societies which furthers the social and economic development of dependent societies. Even with low salaries, aggregate income in a population can be taxed and used to develop a more viable and perhaps less corrupt polity, expand schooling, provide health care, and to facilitate other activities in institutional domains. And even more developed societies seek to tailor their infrastructural development in other societies to their narrow economic interests. The inflow of capital investment from developed societies to formerly dependent societies create a base that can be used for further development by either external economic actors seeking lower-price labor or by indigenous governments now fortified with more tax revenue. Moreover, if manufacturing involves assembled products created by sophisticated technologies— from automobiles to cell phones and computers—these technologies cannot be easily kept as “private knowledge” or, for that matter, be easily regulated by patent rules of entrepreneurs’ home base. Yet, inevitably, these technologies will “transfer” to economic actors in dependent societies through sharing or theft. This transfer of technology is then utilized by emerging indigenous capitalists who are also seeking to participate in domestic and international markets. This process accelerated in the aftermath of World War II, and then further accelerated with the global expansion in capital investment during the 1970s with multinational corporations seeking greater profits through the employment of low-wage labor in developing

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and emerging societies to build their products for domestic and international markets. Whether motivated by the attraction of cheap labor (and higher profits) as well as by the desire to gain access to valued resources, such as oil, these action in long run creates the conditions allowing indigenous political and economic actors to use infrastructural improvements and income from taxes to engage in domestic development. And equally, if not more importantly, development eventually leads economic and political actors, as well as other segments of the general population, to take possession of the infrastructures, physical structures, and social structures of foreign entrepreneurs by force, if necessary, or by negotiations over transfers to indigenous actors. For example, the actors from European societies that had initiated the oil industry in the Middle East during the nineteenth and twentieth century were pushed out in favor of indigenous control of the oil producing infrastructures and corporate units organizing extraction and refining of oil. Similarly, but in a much more of a deliberate long-term strategy, was the encouragement of Western capitalist to invest in the factories and infrastructure of China as part of the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping. This “opening” of the Chinese economy was well-received by Western corporations given the availability of large pools of inexpensive labor and access to the largest consumer market in the World as well as other large markets in Asia. Inevitably, technology “transferred” to indigenous economic entrepreneurs or government-led organizations franchised by state to manufacture the same products as foreign capitalists—from cars to cell phones, computers, and indeed, any product imaginable. The results have been rather spectacular as China as gone from a largely undeveloped society to the second largest economy in the world, with a very healthy trade imbalance in its favor vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The wealth and income created by China over the last 50 years was miracle that was primarily fueled by foreign and public investments in infrastructure and the development of institutional domains, such as education and new housing for all families. Rapid economic development and growing tax revenue have also enhanced the geo-political power of China through investment in advanced technologies for their military, and more recently, the development of a space program. Accordingly, through foreign investment and the development of infrastructure, China has become a dominant society in contemporary geo-economic and geo-political systems. The ascension of China has now led Chinese political and economic actors to establish economic relations with underdeveloped societies in East Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia by investing in their economies to enhance resource extraction, light manufacturing, and the distribution of goods and services. Additionally, China has very self-consciously seen those societies that received aid will also become consumers of Chinese-made products; and perhaps more troublesome, much of this aid may be a precursor to geo-political ambitions of China to exert greater control over more territories based on initially offering “economic carrots” than potentially become a geo-political “stick.” Recent geo-economic processes have permitted traditionally dependent societies to modernize through the development of local infrastructure, expanding production

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capacity and diversification, and investing in new technologies. As a result of these developments, populations within these formerly dependent societies have experienced higher incomes and greater access to education and health care. This shift in geo-economic relations and process indicates internal institutional development reduces dependency. This shift in the fortunes of many formerly dependent societies suggests contemporary geo-economic processes may induce a degree of “balancing” in geo-economic relations where dependent societies can utilize foreign investment and expanding tax revenues to finance internal development and new technologies for extraction, production, and distribution. In turn, domestic firms and entrepreneurial actors can utilize these new technologies and institutions to promote economic development, diversify geo-economic relations, and gain control over domestic economic activity. The decline of dependency is important for economic development among societies in a geo-economic system. Increasingly, foreign direct investment, technology transfer, and the development of local infrastructure have reshaped power relations with these systems. While developing and emerging societies in contemporary geo-economic systems may be relatively underdeveloped compared to the living standards of highly developed societies, the standard of living in developing and emerging societies is the highest it’s ever been in the history of human societies. However, the persistence and growth of domestic economic inequality among emerging and developing societies may instigate a degree of instability. Specifically, growing economic disparities between subpopulations from state intervention, corruption, and discrimination increases the potential for internal conflict and the propensity for military coups that work against growing prosperity for the larger population. Yet, in the long run of several decades, this consolidation and centralization of coercive power often leads to general uprisings or even geo-political intervention by a stronger military power. Alternatively, some underdeveloped societies have remained isolated and highly authoritarian, as is the case with North Korea, but this isolation has led to poorly performing economies that also produce a degree of unrest. Ironically, this isolation strategy, where political control is tight, generally requires a powerful patron, such as North Korea’s dependence on China. Nonetheless, the standard of living in formerly dependent societies3 is better than a generation ago because of a combination of foreign powers loosening geo-political control and/or investment in local infrastructure and technology transfer and provided indigenous economic and political actors greater autonomy and control. This newer pattern is not, however, universal. For example, societies in Central Asia and much of Central Africa have not been able to take advantage of 3

For example, societies in Asia (China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore), South America (e.g., Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica), Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Lithuania, and even Ukraine (despite the present geo-political threats), Africa (Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya), and the Middle East (Jordan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia).

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these new patterns of geo-economic relations. Specifically, these societies maintain geo-economic relations of dependency and attempt to advance economic development and greater autonomy have been thwarted by both external and internal geo-political dynamics as well as by geo-cultural forces like some of the doctrines in extreme forms of Islam. WSA often views these gains by developing and emerging societies from the spread of capitalism as transitory improvements in societies that will provide a base for the contradictions of capitalism to emerge (e.g., Wallerstein 2003). More importantly, WSA predicts this widespread development and decline of dependence will instigate the collapse of capitalism and to the rise of global socialism (e.g., Boswell and Chase-Dunn 2000). The collapse of capitalism may be inevitable especially given the catastrophic ecological challenges facing on the planet over the next century. However, the emergence of global socialism does not seem to be a likely given contemporary geo-economic and geo-political dynamics. A more likely scenario for the future is the reassertion of geo-political dynamics (e.g., warfare) in the coming years as climate change and environmental degradation, and corresponding economic recessions and depressions, increase competition for scarce resources, especially in territories housing populations displaced by rising sea levels (e.g., Bangladesh) and areas with extreme food shortage (e.g., Sudan). Moreover, as recent history suggests, there are growing geo-political tensions that are likely set for military confrontations, such as the conflict between China and the United States over the South China Sea and Taiwan; conflict between NATO and Russia over the expansion of NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, a prediction that as we write is coming true with the Russian invasion of Ukraine; conflict between Iran and Israel; and growing tensions between subpopulations within South Africa and other Western African countries. And any of these conflicts has potential to escalate into a global war, which is consistent with the secular dynamics of inter-societal systems since the emergence of capitalism (Arrighi 1994). The onset of a global war at this point may potentially disintegrate the modern world system, as we know it, perhaps usher in new patterns of geo-economic and geo-political relations (Wallerstein 2003; Arrighi 2007).

6.2.4

Modeling Recent Trends in Geo-Economic Inter-Societal Systems

Figure 6.3 is composed of three interrelated models of geo-economic processes that have unfolded over the last 500 in geo-economic systems, as capitalist modes of production and distribution have worked to increase the number and scope of geo-economic inter-societal systems. Model (a) in Fig. 6.3 outlines the processes leading to a reduction in the dependency of societies within geo-economic systems. Drawing on WSA and Wallerstein’s conceptualization of the international hierarchy, societies located in the “core” of world-systems are structurally and culturally

Level of Infrastructural development Level and differentiation of market distribution

Level of human capital formation Level of transactional capital formation Efficiency of tax collection system

Level political unrest

Level of elite hoarding of wealth

Level of corruption in polity

Level of transactional capital invested in physical capital

Level of investment in human capital

Degree of diversity of social structural formations

Level of joint ownership with indigenous polity and/or indigenous economic actors

Level and breath of investment in infrastructural development

(c) Forces Reducing Dependency in Geo-economic System

Level of stratification

_

Ratio of resources and goods dedicated to (a) indigenous markets of less dominant society vs. (b) export to homebase of dominant society or international markets

_

_

Level of consolidation of power around coercive and symbolic bases of power

_

Level of capacity of polity to extract transactional capital

Degree of consolidation of power around all bases of power: coercive, administrative, incentive, and symbolic

Stability of money and pervasiveness of use in transactions

Level and diversity of polity investments in domestic institutional systems

(b) Forces Creating Dependencies in Geo-economic Systems

Level of resources extraction

Level of production

Scope and diversity of social structural formations

Fig. 6.3 Forces driving more recent patterns of geo-economic inter-societal systems

Level of technology transfer by more dominant society

Level and degree of inequality in distribution of resources

Level of technology of less dominant society

Level of physical capital formation

(a) Forces Creating Less Dependent Geo-economic Systems

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195

developed because of the processes outlined in Model (a). In the model, the processes flowing from left to right reduced the geo-economic dependence of these core societies, and the positive feedbacks running right to left in the model have sustained the comparative independence of these core societies as geo-economic systems evolved. The key to their independence was the relatively higher level of technological development in these societies and their initial engagements in forming geo-economic relations with other societies in inter-societal systems. As illustrated by Western European societies, military technology was critical for structural and cultural development as well as the formation of geo-economic systems. For example, the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and British Empires utilized military technology to improve ships and armaments for advancing their navies and armies in geo-political dominance over underdeveloped societies in Africa, Americas, and Asia (Turchin et al. 2021). The formation of these empires facilitated the creation of geo-economic relations involving large scale extraction of resources, transfers of wealth, and economic outputs from conquered and dependent societies, even societies with moderate-to-high levels of wealth and culture, such as China and India. It is important to note these Western European societies were comparatively underdeveloped compared to India and China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and so, it was elements of their geo-political power that allowed them to become geo-economic hegemons. For example, the East India Company was a geo-economic actor, backed up by the British Navy in keeping other hegemons from interfering in its “looting” of India and “annexation” of Hong Kong, but equally important, as noted in other chapters, the East India Company also had a very large private army, highly armed with more advanced technologies than the larger armies in India and China. Thus, again geo-politics is almost always involved in earlier geo-economic empires. And, by the time European societies were creating less coercive based empires adopting more colonial types of inter-societal organization, these European societies experienced rapid and extensive structural and cultural development with the Reformations and Age of Enlightenment. This period also constituted the formative years of what would eventually become capitalism that would end feudalism and, thereby, fuel rapid economic and market growth that would be the foundation of late colonialism as well as the more purely geo-economic systems in the modern world system as it evolved during the whole of the twentieth century. Following the arrows across Model (a) in Fig. 6.3, technology allows for infrastructural development within a society and the capacity to engage in geo-economic action (e.g., ports, roads, storage facilities, and financial services). This expansion of local infrastructure increases resource extraction, production, and market distribution in domestic economies. This increase in economic activity is also possible when societies move out from their home base and form geo-political laced geo-economic relations with other societies. As markets increasingly become more dynamic, differentiated, and layered into meta-markets, as the models of Braudel (see Fig. 3.7) and Collins (Fig. 3.8) or the propositions offered by extending Goldstone (see Table 3.2) outline, all forms of capital increase—transactional, human, and physical—thereby leading to investments in the skills of

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humans and the building of structural formations that further expands markets as well as levels of resource extraction, production, and distribution. The development of mediums of exchange and other financial instruments sustain this growth while changing local the culture by creating new symbolic system—texts, values, technologies, and generalized-ideologies—that not only drive but also legitimate economic growth. At the same time, this emerging culture creates pressures for a new kind of polity that is somewhat more democratic, less corrupt, and more efficient and responsive to the needs of families and individuals outside of elite circles. Moreover, the introduction of new political systems increases the efficiency of tax collection, especially under circumstances of economic growth where there is so much more—family incomes, businesses, marketing outlets, capital formation, accumulated wealth, etc.—that can be subject to taxation. An increase in tax revenue permits further infrastructural development which continues to fuel economic growth and, more broadly, institutional development in polity and economy as well as other institutional domains. As result, the four bases of power—coercive, administrative, incentive, and symbolic—within these societies become more balanced, and particularly so if there is less use of the coercive base (at least at the home base). Moreover, (1) the expansion of the administrative base with institutional development and tax collection and re-distribution, (2) the changes in the symbolic base (culture) of power propagating ideologies legitimating more democratic forms of governance (e.g., “human rights” and “personal freedom”) and extolling entrepreneurship and hard work (e.g., the “protestant ethic”), and (3) the greater use of the incentive base of power will all work to expand technologies, all forms of capital, and structural formations that increase resource extraction (gathering), production, and distribution in more differentiated and extensive markets. And, most importantly, these processes exert feedback on each other which reinforces this upward trajectory of cultural and structural development that also works as positive feedback on expanding all facets of an economy. At this stage, it is important to emphasize that Model (a) is an idealized portrayal of what occurred over the last 500 years in Europe. The developmental trajectory of these societies was far more episodic and dynamic than upwardly linear. Model (a) is a kind of Weberian ideal type that denotes some key societal dynamics. In the real world, the processes outlined in Model (a) did not universally occur without other intervening forces that moderated these processes. Moreover, it took over a thousand years after the fall of Rome for these processes to begin operating in these early capitalist societies; and it was only after industrialization that this developmental trajectory accelerated dramatically. Still, the incremental development of new technologies during this long period increased extraction, production, distribution, and infrastructural development of European societies did, in the end, create societies somewhat like the ideal type outlined in Fig. 6.3a. Model (b) in Fig. 6.3 outlines the linear processes operating at both the societal and inter-societal level, that intersects and moderates the processes outlined in Models (a) and (c). The dynamics of inequality and stratification are important for determining the degree of geo-economic dependency where these dynamics suppress the developmental effects of the processes in Model (a). High levels of

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stratification and inequality in resource distribution lead to an accumulation or hoarding of wealth by elites that is less likely to be invested as capital into new technologies and physical structures for resource extraction, production, and distribution as well as institutional and infrastructural development. Moreover, taxes by polity in a highly stratified and unequal society are more often used as patronage to elites and as funds to support political elites who build up the coercive base of power to sustain inequalities and engage in geo-political and geo-economic actions. Accordingly, dominant societies in early geo-political and geo-economic systems often replicated the structure of their home base—extracting resources for the benefit of elites and the powerful, thereby reproducing stratification within societies and between societies. In these early inter-societal systems, dominant societies forced other societies into geo-economic relations through geo-political intervention even if these other societies were relatively developed, as was the case for was the case of India, China, and other Asian societies as well as was the case for the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca Empires. Dominant European societies coerced these societies in geo-economic relations based on plantation and colonial strategies of domination, which made these formerly developed societies poorer and dependent on European societies. Model (c) outlines some of the processes that will reduce dependence, even in the presence of stratification. Technology transfers leading to increased extraction, production, distribution generate capital for investing in infrastructural and institutional development activates the processes outlined in Model (a). A major process for reducing dependency in Model (c) is to increase the circulation of wealth generated within a dependent economy by providing domestic economic and political actors with greater control over wealth and creating partnerships with external economic and political actors. In so doing, domestic actors become able to re-invest their wealth in infrastructural and institutional development, while the polity has a stronger tax base to do the same. From the WSA perspective, the processes outlined in Model (c) are the forces that create semi-peripheral societies. And if these processes are sufficiently robust, a semi-peripheral society experience upward mobility in the international hierarchy of societies. For example, the United States of America and Peoples’ Republic of China were semi-peripheral societies that were dependent on the British Empire and were able to achieve international mobility by exerting greater control over capital and engaging external actors into partnerships designed to promote investment in local infrastructure and institutions As discussed earlier in this chapter, technology transfers (whether intended or not) from external actors in dominant societies to entrepreneurs and political actors in dependent societies fuel economic growth and the capacity of domestic actors to control wealth. And if the wealth generated in these economies is sufficiently robust, the amount of transactional capital will increase with greater taxation or profits, which leads to more investments in infrastructures and human capital. Additionally, the diversity of extracted resources and products in an economy enhances these processes even under conditions of exploitive exchange between societies. Specifically, external actors from dominant societies are more likely to

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invest in developing infrastructure of dependent societies if the economies of these societies can produce a broader array of materials and products. The development of infrastructure creates a base for further economic development, and especially so when domestic actors are involved in the construction of infrastructure and the building of social structural formations across a wider variety of extractive and productive sectors. If such activities by domestic actors in a dependent economy can be leveraged into joint-production efforts external actors, then one of the key balancing conditions reducing dependency has been realized (see Proposition 2-A through D in Table 6.2). More importantly, these processes also produce feedback effects which further reduces dependency while initiating the processes outlined in Model (a). The distribution of resources, goods, and services that are generated by the domestic economy in local markets, as opposed to markets in dominant societies or international markets, amplifies these feedback effects in Model (c) and initiates the processes in Model (a). As is often the case, the decline of geo-economic dependency increases the propensity for the polity in a dependent society to exert greater control of its populations and territory by expelling external actors from dominant societies. Moreover, if these changes in a dependent society reduce internal stratification, then these dynamics will induce the processes outlined in Model (a). Overall, the three models in Fig. 6.3 identify the fundamental variables and processes underlying the formation of geo-economic systems of dependence. The complexity and generality of these models are necessary given wide array of geo-economic configurations across human history and the evolution of contemporary geo-economic systems that have incorporated increasingly more and more societies into complex networks of geo-economic relations with each other. The formation of an increasingly complex and large geo-economic system among contemporary societies has been mediated by capitalist markets that have allowed some societies to activate the processes in Model (c), reduce the dynamics in Model (b), and increasingly move toward the dynamics in Model (a). Dominant societies in Western Europe went through these processes much earlier and avoided high levels of domination of their geo-economic systems, thus bypassing the phase of having to overcome a state of dependence on a more powerful hegemon, which was the case when the Roman Empire controlled much of what is now Western Europe. However, it took a thousand of years for these early European societies to build up their institutional systems—particularly polity, economy, education, and science—to the point of being sufficiently powerful in military and in productive technologies to be successful in geo-political mobilization and then as geo-economic domination in ways that allowed for now more rapid institutional development that looked ever-more like the idealized processes outlined in Model (a).

6.2 Models and Principles of Geo-Economic Dynamics

6.2.5

199

Additional Theoretical Propositions on Geo-Economic Systems

Table 6.3 offers additional propositions on the evolutionary and power dynamics of geo-economic inter-societal systems. The expansion of the predominately capitalist world economy was interrupted and moderated by warfare and efforts at geo-political domination. However, despite geo-political dynamics, geo-economic systems have increased in scale and scope during this period. And, while geo-economics and geo-politics often co-exist in inter-societal formations, WSA is generally correct in arguing that geo-economics seems to have surpassed geo-politics in the modern world system, at least in the present, but the Russian incursion into Ukraine is perhaps a harbinger of the geo-political future. However, geo-political dynamics and relations remain relevant and geo-political systems will likely supersede geo-economic systems as a fundamental driver of inter-societal relations. As discussed earlier in the chapter, the contradictions of capitalism and impeding ecological disaster are unlikely to induce global socialism that unifies society under a supranational polity. Instead, counter-balancing patterns of geo-political relations involving treaty commitments for defense, coupled with high levels of exchange among societies allied in a geo-political formation, are most likely to define inter-societal systems in the future, if the revitalization of not only NATO with formerly neutral non-members in Europe considering joining NATO in Table 6.3 Additional theoretical propositions on geo-economic systems 1. The scale and spread of geo-economic intersocietal systems linking both societies of the same or varying levels of economic development is a multiplicative exponential function of: A The level of technology capital formation of developed societies vis-à-vis less developed societies B The level of competition among economic and political actors in developed societies, which increases with: 1. The need to acquire resources that are in short supply but still needed for the domestic economy of a developed society 2. The need for the polity of a developed society to lower the access of another developed society to valued resources in another society C The scale and reach of the existing global markets that link or potentially can link societies in exchange relationships D The scale and reach of meta-markets engaged in exchange of money and other financial instruments, including stocks, insurance, futures, and derivatives E The scale and reach of technologies for, and the building out of infrastructures, by societies for moving money, financial instruments, bulk goods, information, and people around the globe F The scale and powers of non-governmental corporate units, linked to developed societies, to move capital, technology, and models of entrepreneurship, and expertise in critical areas (engineering, medicine, construction, education) G The existence of mediating agencies, with legal powers, to adjudicate disputes among economic actors and polities stemming from geo-economic and/or geo-political actions of societies (continued)

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Table 6.3 (continued) H The willingness of economic actors in more developed societies to use technology and capital to build physical structures and structural formations (corporate units engaged in extraction, production, and marketing) and infrastructures for both economic and other institutional domains as well, with the effect of this use increasing with: 1. The size of the indigenous population as a potential market for resources and products produced by economic actors from other societies 2. Transfers of technology, whether intended or not, to indigenous corporate units 3. Joint ownership between indigenous and foreign economic actors 4. Joint ownership between foreign economic actors and polity of the indigenous society 5. Willingness to allow or train members of the indigenous population to build, manage, and eventually own the corporate units engaged in resource extraction, production, and marketing within a society and, eventually, outside of a society 6. Perceptions by dominant political or economic actors that they must co-op the polity and population in a longer-term exchange relationship and geo-political alliance 2. The likelihood of a breakdown, collapse, or devolution of a geo-economic system is multiplicative function of: A Instability global markets and especially the meta-markets used by one or more hegemonic societies of an inter-societal subsystem B Warfare among regional or global hegemons, the likelihood of which increases with: 1. Trade disagreements among hegemons 2. Geo-Political actions by one or more hegemons against each other and/or their respective dependent exchange partners 3. Global-level recessions in which there is meta-market, regional market, and domestic markets collapse, which renders unstable the polities of central societies 3. The scale and spread of geo-economic intersocietal systems linking both societies of the sameor varying levels of economic development is a multiplicative exponential function of: The likelihood of patterns of domination by economic actors over other societies in geo-economic inter-societal systems is a negative function of the conditions listed under 3A to 3H and high levels of stratification within societies while being a positive and additive function of the conditions listed in 1-A to 1-F in Table 6.2 4. The likelihood that one or more historically less-dominant societies in a geo-economic system will, over time, become an economic power in an intersocietal system is an additive function of: A The capacity of the less-dominant society to protect its markets from other global economic actors without retaliation by the polities of other societies, which, in turn, is a positive function of its polity to promise future trade concessions, with this promise carrying more weight when: 1. The size of this population in this society is large and, in the future, will generate high levels of demand from workers being paid by global actors for goods and services in the future, and hence, increasing the prospects for future profits for developed societies 2. The size of the low-cost labor pool of the society serves as an incentive for external economic actors to invest in capital and technology in order to gain price advantages for its products over those of competitors in its own domestic markets and the markets of other societies in the geo-economic system B The ability of the polity in the less-dominant society to protect its own natural resources for domestic production rather than their export as bulk goods to other societies or the dominant societies’ home base (continued)

6.3 Conclusion

201

Table 6.3 (continued) C The degree in which the less dominant society occupies a strategic position in the geo-political rivalries of other developed societies and, as a consequence, can use this position to negotiate technological and capital investments from competing developed societies D The degree to which societies occupy a strategic or central position in market and meta-market exchanges of the global system of markets E The degree to which a society has greater political and/or economic power than its immediate neighbors in the larger geo-economic and geo-political systems

the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in winter of 2022. In such a system, geo-economics relations would be contingent on the most basic geo-political formation: an alliance and commitment to come to the aid to societies under threat from another geo-political actor. As shown by the Russian incursion into Ukraine, Russian mobilization to occupy another sovereign country has largely been met with a series of economic sanctions intended to deter further escalation and warfare. This situation underscores the pervasiveness of geo-economics even in the geo-political arena, but also underscores geo-political actors, like Russia, can try to leverage geo-economic dependence of some European nations on Russian oil, but the threat posed by geo-political action was so great that Russian efforts at leveraging in their actions have failed because of the Europe and, indeed, some key actors in the world is hostile to the Russian incursion and, indeed, exhibited a rather rare moment of almost unity. Moreover, the forces that have been operating to expand global capitalism can work to deter geo-political conflict among societies. However, the interplay of geo-economic and geo-political dynamics suggests societies are willing to sever exchange relations in the name of supporting a geo-political alliance, again as is illustrated by the recent sanctions imposed on Russia by NATO allies. Given these arguments, the propositions in Table 6.3 outline the conditions generating the scale and scope of geo-economic inter-societal systems.

6.3

Conclusion

Overall, the models and propositions in this chapter were developed to encapsulate arguments in the WSA literature which have largely focused on the formation and dynamics of the capitalist world economy. At this stage, the theoretical models and propositions in this chapter are speculative about the evolution of the capitalist world economy and the formation of new geo-economic systems. In contrast to early WSA, it is unclear if the rather dynamic system of global capitalism is going to become a system of global socialism. Even under conditions of systemic collapses, which is certainly a possibility (see Proposition 4 in Table 6.3), it is far more

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likely that the global system would devolve to blocks of allied societies in regional geo-political formations within a multi-polar system of power that determines patterns of geo-economic relations. For example, NATO, as a more robust geo-political formation encompassing Central and Western Europe and North America, would maintain a geo-economic system of high levels of exchange among societies in these regions. Moreover, US alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan constitute another geo-political formation that resists Chinese geo-economic and geo-political ambitions in East Asia, which has driven China to form new alliances in the region (ASEAN) to counterbalance the United States sphere of influence. And despite the clear antagonism between China and the U.S., both economies are highly interdependent with the U.S. relying on manufacturing goods from China and their consumer markets, while China is reliant on technology, investment, and financial markets of the U.S. Thus, it is unlikely that global socialism to emerge from the contemporary world economy. Socialism might be utilized as a potential alternative in some countries; however, it is more likely to be the Nordic model of socialism, which combines private capitalist production and distribution with government sponsored social programs supported by high taxes. The only holdout to such a transition would probably be the United States, with its somewhat irrational and knee jerk reaction to anything “socialistic,” even if it might save capitalism. Yet, since global capitalism is relatively new and dynamic, it is difficult to predict the future. Extrapolation is rarely a good predictive strategy; the theoretical principles and models that we have developed do not extrapolate but, instead, work to integrate WSA with other perspectives on inter-societal systems. To repeat perhaps too much, the main purpose of this book is to provide an alternative strategy to theorizing inter-societal dynamics that moves beyond historical description by offering abstract models and propositions that can inform predictions about the future. In the next chapter, which is the last substantive chapter of the book, we move to the topic of geo-cultural inter-societal systems. This idea emerged from the “world culture” perspective, which was developed as reaction to WSA4. We argue geo-cultural dynamics are important in inter-societal systems because ideologies, values, and norms are shared across societies especially through the networks generated from geo-economic and geo-political relations. Still, as became evident with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, many of its member societies had never really adopted Western culture pushed by Moscow while many societies on the western front of the Soviet Union retained their western European cultures, making the transition to Western and capitalist culture easy. And in predominately Muslim countries, Islamic culture persists despite forces of secularism and modernization.

4

This world culture approach has elements of the older modernization approach, which emphasized changing the cultures and motive states of actors in less developed societies through capital investments by more developed nations and by various non-governmental actors, like the World Bank and other such organizations.

References

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Thus, while our analysis will have speculative elements, it is useful to consider culture, per se, because it is one of the key dimensions, as we outlined in Chap. 1, of all societal and inter-societal systems.

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. Andre, Gunder, Frank. 1969. Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso. Arrighi, Giovanni. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso. Bornschier, Volker, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 1985. Transnational Corporations and Underdevelopment. New York: Praeger. Boswell, Terry, and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2000. The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism: Toward Global Democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers. Braudel. 1977. Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chase-Dunn, Christopher, and Thomas D. Halls. 1993. Comparing world-systems: Concepts and working hypotheses. Social Forces 71 (4): 851–886. 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. Clark, Rob. 2016. Examining Mobility in International Development. Social Problems 63: 329– 350. Collins. 1990. Market dynamics as the engine of historical change. Sociological Theory 8(2): 111– 135. Dixon, William, and Terry Boswell. 1996. Dependency, disarticulation, and denominator effects: Another look at foreign capital penetration. American Journal of Sociology 102: 543–562. Evans, Peter B., and Michael Timberlake. 1980. Dependence, inequality, and the growth of the tertiary: A comparative analysis of less developed countries. American Sociological Review 45 (4): 531–551. Firebaugh, Glenn. 2003. The New Geography of Global Income Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Frank. 1967. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1978. World Accumulation, 1492–1789 New York: Monthly Review Press. Gamble, Lynn H. 2020. The Origin and Use of Shell Bead Money in California. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 60: 101237. Kentor, Jeffrey. 1998. The long-term effects of foreign investment dependence on economic growth, 1940–1990. American Journal of Sociology 103 (4): 1024–1046. Lenski, Gerhard. 2005. Ecological-Evolutionary Theory: Principles & Applications. New York: Routledge. Lotz, Christian. 2014. The Capitalist Schema: Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction. Lexington Books. Mahutga, Matthew C. and David A. Smith. 2011. Globalization, the structure of the world economy, and economic development. Social Science Research 40: 257–272. Marshall, Alfred. 1920. Principles of Economics, 8th ed. London: Macmillan.

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Martin, William G., ed. 2008. Making Waves: Worldwide Social Movements, 1760–2005. Boulder: Paradigm Press. Marx, Karl. 1959. Capital, vol. 3. Moscow: Foreign Languages. Robbins, Lionel. 1935. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. London: Macmillan. Sala-i-Martin, Xaiver. 2002. The disturbing ‘Rise’ of global income inequality. NBER Working Paper 8904. Turchin, P., D. Hoyer, A. Korotayev, N. Kradin, S. Nefedov, G. Feinman, et al. 2021. Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. PLoS ONE 16 (10): e0258161. Turner. 1995. Macrodynamics: toward a theory on the organization of human populations. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Turner. 1997. The Institutional Order: Economy, Kinship, Religion, Polity, Law, and Education in Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective. New York: Longman. Turner. 2003. Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution. Boulder CO: Rowman and Littlefield. Turner. 2010. Theoretical Principles of Sociology, Volume 2 on Microdynamics. New York: Springer. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press Wallerstein. 1979. The Capitalist World Economy. London: Cambridge University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 2003. The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World. New York: The New Press.

Chapter 7

Geo-Cultural Dynamics

Culture was simple in the earliest societies. It consisted of a language spoken by members of a population, technologies for hunting and gathering, verbal texts, implicit value premises, and perhaps meta-ideologies drawn from kinship norms, emerging beliefs about another universe of the supernatural (as least for some populations), oral traditions that were passed down from one generation to another, and perhaps a few objects symbolizing aspects of culture that had to be carried in the movements of bands around a home range. This simplicity of culture and social structures organizing hunter-gatherers was an adaptive strategy of survival for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, the cultural dimensions of pre-modern inter-societal systems of hunter-gatherer and early horticultural societies remain under-theorized, as does theorizing on later inter-societal systems throughout the Holocene. Considering this neglect, we aim in this chapter to outline, in highly provisional form, models and abstract propositions on geo-cultural dynamics in pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems. As we have emphasized earlier in the book, even the simplest and earliest societies formed inter-societal relations, mostly around the trade of bulk goods in networks of exchange for unprocessed goods, such as salt and obsidian, that were often passed down from one population to another through lines of exchange across protracted amounts territory. Moreover, conflicts among bands occurred when circumscription put them in competition for the resources, but there was no capacity to engage in protracted war because there was no polity, only leaders who may have emerged under times of stress for a band. Underlying these early forms of geo-economic and even geo-political inter-societal relations were geo-cultural dynamics and formations. Culture always follows building social structures, and so, inter-societal systems at all times and places will reveal cultural dynamics that, as noted, have been under-theorized. The frequency and intensity of circumscription and bulk good exchange increased significantly with the settlement of hunter-gatherer bands. The earliest societies settled in geographic areas with abundant resources, and this abundance created the conditions for exchange and conflict because the resources that enticed © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8_7

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one population to form a more permanent community would naturally attract other populations of hunter-gatherers to do the same, as long as resources were sufficient. It is important to note these settled populations were probably of the same language group, and thus, this cultural base could be used to forge a larger cultural formation. Although data on settled hunter-gatherers, such as the Wintu studied by Chase-Dunn and Mann (1998), demonstrate that different populations speaking different languages and revealing variations in a culture still engaged in exchange, as did the examples on silent exchange documented in earlier chapters. Exchange is one way to reduce tensions stemming from circumscriptions, especially exchange that is highly ritualized gatherings and revolves around not only bulk goods but also around prestige goods that promote peace and some degree of solidarity. Of course, at times these relatively amicable, or at least regularized relations, among settled populations could turn hostile, leading to violence. We know from simple horticulturalists that such was often the case; and indeed, constant warfare was often a feature of populations inhabiting essentially the same ecological location. We mention these features of early societies to emphasize the fundamental point that geo-cultural formations were probably very small because there were so few structures in these societies. Specifically, these early societies contained relatively simple symbolic systems associated with kinship and band, hunting and gathering technologies, emerging religious beliefs, texts that had to be held in memory, implicit value premises, and very simple, if any, meta-ideologies because of the lack of differentiated institutions (all were embedded in kinship) and virtually no inequality and, hence, stratification—at least until Big Man societies evolved. More generally, there was a high level of structural equivalence1 in hunting and gathering societies, even among populations living in somewhat different ecologies. And hence, there was probably a high degree of cultural equivalence as well (Sailer 1978; White 1983, 1984). This is an important point because the evolution of societies coincided with structural and cultural differentiation. This transformation began with the emergence of Big Man systems in some ecologies and, eventually, simple horticultural societies emerged followed by the advance horticultural and, then, simple agrarian and then advanced agrarian societies. These evolving forms of human societies became structurally differentiated into new institutional domains and stratification systems. However, a high degree of structural and, hence, cultural equivalence remained since early horticultural societies were built on kinship as the structural base. The decline of kinship as the structural base, with the emergence of a more autonomous polity, economy, and religion, instigated the evolution of new types of corporate units (communities, groups, and organizations) as building blocks of

We are using this term in the sense of “regular equivalence” (White and Reitz 1983) in the social network literature, thus usurping the original label from an earlier literature on networks. We do so because it is more clear what we are emphasizing: the isomorphism and similarly structural forms among hunting–gathering populations. 1

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institutional domains and new forms of categoric units beyond gender and age that had typified hunter-gatherers that would eventually become the basis for stratification systems. Differentiation of structure is always accompanied by differentiation of culture, with each having reciprocal causal effects on the other. Yet, even as this structural and cultural differentiation occurred, there was still a high degree of structural and cultural equivalence. The cultures revolving around kinship, economy, polity, and religion as more distinct institutional domains differed in substance depending on the ecology in which diverse populations lived, but convergence in the form of culture was still evident. Indeed, these new, more complex societies can be categorized as “societal types” because of this structural and cultural equivalence. Societies at the same “stage” of evolution would thus have used the generalized symbolic media associated with kinship, religion, polity, and economy to create converging ideologies and normative systems, although the particulars of ideologies would vary. For most of human history, geo-cultural dynamics were very limited because of the isomorphism that arises from structural equivalence in the organization of populations, But, as the differences between settled hunter-gatherers and nomadic hunter-gatherers in both short and protracted exchange relations with other hunter-gatherers’ document, culture changes as soon as new institutional domains evolve. Thus, as institutional differentiation of polity, religion, and economy from kinship occurred at different rates, it is likely that contact, whether through exchange or warfare, would bring into contact not only different structural formations—e.g., nomadic hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists—but also different cultures attached to these structural formations. Under these conditions where either, or both, geo-economic and geo-political dynamics are in play, so are geo-cultural dynamics. And, as “world society” perspective emphasizes, geo-economics and geo-politics have caused societies to converge toward similar structural profiles over the last two centuries. This increasing structural isomorphism—e.g., rational– legal bureaucracies, urbanization and suburbanization, infrastructures development, and market economies—had caused cultures to converge. And culture as a fundamental property of human social organization is, therefore, a powerful force in inter-societal formations. Hence, geo-cultural dynamics are central to understanding geo-political and geo-economic dynamics outlined in Chaps. 5 and 6. This chapter is thus devoted to determining the generic conditions under which geo-cultural dynamics come into play in relation to geo-political and geo-economic dynamics.

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Drivers of Geo-Cultural Dynamics Proximity and Language

Cultural formations are often driven by the dynamics revolving around geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal formations. Specifically, the mode of organization in geo-political and geo-economic relations in inter-societal systems affects the nature of geo-cultural formations. In the earliest inter-societal systems, where hunting and gathering societies were the dominant mode of societal organization, geo-cultural formations were defined by bands sharing a common language, which was especially common among bands inhabiting sectors of the same ecological space. In addition, societies in close geographic proximity to each other that share a common language and are structurally equivalent, are likely to adopt a common culture which also encouraged the formation of geo-political and economic relations. In fact, geo-economic exchanges of resources, as well as political consolidation among societies sharing language and culture, are what provide the structural base for an inter-societal system. Indeed, it is the commonality in culture and comparatively close proximity of different human populations that drive geo-economic and geo-political activities; and such has been the case for not only the first human societies but also for all other types of societies. In the contemporary inter-societal system, we find economic and political globalization is partially facilitated by the emergence and diffusion of a global culture (Meyer et al. 1997; Meyer 2000). For example, the historical and contemporary cultural convergence of Canada and the United States and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the United States and Mexico facilitated the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and more recently, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Similarly, the adoption of a common cultural model and language among populations in the British Isles has shifted the United Kingdom from geo-political domination by England to interdependent geo-economic and political relations under a constitutional monarchy. Overall, past and present geo-cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems are interwoven with geo-economic and political dynamics. Thus, it is important to theorize the formation of cultural models and their diffusion across different human populations in inter-societal systems.

7.1.2

Diffusion of Geo-Cultural Formations

The most prominent theoretical explanation of geo-cultural dynamics and formations in inter-societal systems is the “world society perspective” which emphasizes the diffusion of cultural models across human societies (e.g., Meyer et al. 1997: 144–145; McNeely 2012). Meyer (2009) summarizes this formation and diffusion of cultural models with a set of interrelated processes. First, a global civil society

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emerges in intersocial systems with the formation of prescriptive models about human actors and organizations. Second, these global models diffuse across different populations through dense networks of professionals, technocrats, and advocacy organizations that, in turn, create a degree of isomorphism in internal patterns of organization of corporate units within key institutional domains. Third, activities within organizations can, of course, deviate or be decoupled from global models and the specific modes of organizations in particular places but, still, there is a tendency for convergence. Fourth, this decoupling can occur and create institutional tension because cultural codes and models may be in conflict, often prompting social change and the development of new cultural models. A central problem with the “world society perspective” is that it was developed to explain cultural dynamics in the contemporary inter-societal system, which is an extremely limiting perspective and implicitly assumes that these dynamics did not exist in pre-modern inter-societal systems. Chase-Dunn and Halls’ (1993) “comparative world-systems perspective” provides a useful concept for explaining the structural basis for diffusion: information networks, which can exist in all inter-societal systems. Information networks exist across a large geographic scale, even in pre-modern inter-societal systems with mostly pre-literate societies, because information is “light” and thus easily transported in the human brain, especially when compared to other resources like bulk goods. In contemporary inter-societal systems, informational networks encompass the entire globe because of advanced information technologies and infrastructures (e.g., internet, fiber optics, social media, and data centers). From the “comparative world-systems perspective” information networks among pre-literate societies in early inter-societal systems formed around three networks: bulk goods networks, prestige goods networks, and military networks. However, we contend information networks are almost always protracted beyond networks of good exchange or political arrangements. The exchange of goods requires overcoming several logistical barriers (e.g., transportation technology and geography) and political arrangements require intensive interaction and agreement which is why other networks are smaller in geographic scale compared to information networks. The exchange of information” only requires two people from different populations to interact. Thus, even in pre-modern inter-societal systems among pre-literate societies, information networks were large in geographic scale, and information always moves faster than bulk and prestige goods; this exchange of information often created a cultural environment for the exchange of these goods, while facilitating the emergence of political arrangements. Cultural diffusion along networks of information needs to have relevance for the institutional systems of a population and some information may be irrelevant to the organization of populations receiving information from far away. Nonetheless, what was true of pre-modern inter-societal composed of pre-literate populations is still true today in current inter-societal systems composed of highly literate populations with extraordinary information and communication technologies and infrastructures. Even if the information comes “packaged” as models and coherent sets of ideas, these need to seem relevant to members of a population, which is determined by the structure of corporate units within institutional systems. If the information is

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not relevant, it will not be adopted, unless populations are under heavy selection pressures from their environments and desperate for new models for social organization. Thus, while diffusion of cultural models is an important dynamic in inter-societal systems, it is also important to identify how culture forms into symbolic systems— values, beliefs, technologies, generalized ideologies, institutional ideologies and meta-ideologies consolidating institutional ideologies, institutional norms, and the normative systems of local corporate units. Information that is “packaged” into symbolic systems by one population will be evaluated by other populations, even those with very different institutional systems. If it is relevant to a population’s institutional systems and the corporate units of these systems, or if it facilitates exchanges between populations, then some elements of another society’s culture may be adopted and adjusted to existing systems. However, if it is packaged and transmitted along successive exchange routes in which societies at different levels of organization participate, the information moving along these networks may not be relevant. For example, knowledge about mining or building cars along networks may not be relevant for a fishing population or for one of the simple agrarian or herding economies that still exist in the world. Still, it may become salient in a negative sense of threatening another population. And so, while geo-cultural diffusion processes are prominent in inter-societal systems, we argue there is a fundamental weakness in the diffusion model of geo-cultural formations. Indeed, diffusion may be a much more prominent dynamic among pre-industrial and pre-literate populations where models would be more implicit and pass along trade routes of much less length than those of the present-day world-system. And so, we find contemporary theoretical analysis in the “world society” and “world-systems” perspectives is problematic because they are limited to one historical period. For example, world-systems analysis is primarily restricted to explaining the rise of capitalism in inter-societal systems starting in the sixteenth century; and the world society perspective is restricted to explaining the rise of modernity among nation-states in the post-World War II era. Yet, we aim to develop a general theory of geo-cultural formation and diffusion in both pre-modern and modern inter-societal systems that extend theorizing from the present world-system to the earliest systems in human history. In our theory below, we begin by introducing how structural, cultural, and infrastructural equivalences condition geo-cultural dynamics and other dynamics that are critical for understanding geo-cultural processes in inter-societal systems. Specifically, we begin developing a generalized theory of inter-societal systems by identifying and explaining the interplay of geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural dynamics in these systems. Accordingly, we contend the dynamics outlined in Chaps. 5 and 6 are essential to understanding the diffusion dynamics of geo-cultural formations.

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Structural and Cultural Equivalences

Equally fundamental to the diffusion of culture in inter-societal systems are the dynamics of structural and cultural equivalences (Sailor 1978; White 1983, 1984; Smith and White 1992), in which the profile of two or more societies in their institutional systems are equivalent in their structure. For example, a common language between two societies is an equivalence that increases the likelihood of a geo-cultural system forming and helps facilitate geo-economic and geo-political formations. Similarly, an equivalence in institutional systems of different societies is likely to produce cultural equivalence with respect to technologies, values, and generalized ideologies as these emerge from a similar configuration of institutional domains, and ideologies arising from activities in these domains (see Fig. 1.3). Moreover, we may expect two societies to show an equivalence in their system of stratification and the meta-ideology legitimating this system. Therefore, it is important to examine the structural equivalences between societies to determine the degree of cultural equivalence driving geo-cultural diffusion in inter-societal systems. In the earliest inter-societal system, nomadic hunting and gathering societies were equivalent in their structural profile—kin units (nuclear families) within bands. Therefore, it should not be surprising that ideologies arising out of kinship and the emerging ideologies associated with economic activity, leadership (pre-political) activities, and religious activities were similar across these societies. Additionally, the powerful cultural norms among nomadic hunter-gatherers against inequalities in power were common among virtually all nomadic hunter-gatherers. The transition from nomadic to sedentary hunter-gatherer societies may have changed these norms. For example, the case of the Wintu-centered system shows that leadership, as a precursor to polity, is evident when hunter-gatherers settle into more permanent communities (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). In this case, bestowing power to control others among the Wintu was predicated on prestige, respect, and influence of leaders, but not coercive power. Among early “Big Man” hunter-gatherers’ societies, like those in the Pacific Northwest, leaders were given power and authority over small populations, but this power was conditional on their charisma and ability to negotiate with neighboring societies to create stable geo-economic and geo-political relations as well as to fairly distribute of goods among members of their population (Ames 1994; Sassaman 2004; Textor 1967). The emergence of early horticultural societies generated greater structural and cultural equivalence because social organization through unilineal descent created equivalences in corporate-unit organization (e.g., nuclear families, lineages, clans, sub-clans, sodalities, and moieties) that, in turn, generated equivalences in cultures (technologies, decent rules, allocation of power, community organization, economic organization, and religious organization). As a result, this type of social organization also created inequalities that were similar across early horticultural societies. More importantly, this structural and cultural equivalence among early horticultural societies provided the basis for geo-economic and or geo-political activities between societies, even if they did not speak the same language. And these

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dynamics continued as societies evolved and became more structurally equivalent with the transitions from advanced horticulture, simple agriculture, fishing, herding, and then agrarian, to industrial and post-industrial societies. Most recently, the “world society” perspective conceptualizes this increasing structural equivalence as “isomorphism” among modern societies embedded in a dense network of civil actors promoting a world culture. However, this perspective and conceptualization of structural and cultural equivalence ignores the fundamental role of inter-societal domination in this diffusion process. If societies are at different levels of development in their technologies, economic capacity for production and distribution, and political capacity for militarization and administration, then geo-political and geo-economic relations between societies will often involve dominance by the more developed society. In one scenario, the culture of the dependent society will remain the same under conditions of geo-economic and/or political domination because it further promotes dependent relations with hegemons. In another scenario, the culture of dependent societies will change if power and/or economic activities of the dominant society push for change in the structural profile of the dependent society, as would be the case if a hegemon invested in infrastructure and education. However, the dominant society may limit investment in developing the dependent society because of institutional change and cultural shifts within institutional domains, and the corporate units in these domains (communities, organizations, and groups), as well as changes in the patterns of stratification, will lead to rebellion and mobilization to weaken the hegemons political control. The historical case of cultural imperialism within the British Empire is illustrative of these scenarios with the British selectively imposing culture on specific colonies to further British rule. Despite the limited historical focus of the world society perspective, geo-cultural diffusion and dynamics of structural equivalence revolving around dependence have always operated when societies are at a different level of economic and political evolution and when relations are exploitive. The strategy of domination by the hegemon is thus critical to the structural changes that, in turn, generate cultural changes (see Table 4.1); and if these are dramatic, then new forms of not only geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal organization emerge. Additionally, new forms of geo-cultural relations will evolve as the social structure and culture of formerly highly dependent societies now begins to converge with that of the dominant society. Indeed, movement from the periphery to the semi-periphery is an example of this process in motion. In world-systems’ language, new geo-cultural systems begin to evolve as dependent societies begin to develop economic and political relations with a dominant society; these relations inevitably lead to some transfer of technologies, values, and generalized ideologies as institutions begin to evolve from outside pressures from a hegemon. And so, once institutional changes and perhaps also changes in stratification patterns occur, geo-cultural inter-societal systems can emerge as either an adjunct to existing geo-political or geo-economic systems or, alternatively, as a stimulus to new types of geo-cultural as well as geo-economic and/or relations among societies. For example, the American rebellion against the

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British unlocked the political and economic power of the new society while also leading to new variations of English into a distinctly American culture that had large effects on all subsequent relations between England and the United States to the present century when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States passed England as a dominant economic and political power in the world.

7.1.4

Infrastructural Equivalence

Absent in prior theorizing of inter-societal systems is attention to the effects of infrastructures. Specifically, the equivalence of infrastructures between societies in an inter-societal system affects the nature of the geo-cultural dynamics, especially when the institutional systems of societies are also equivalent. Infrastructural equivalence promotes more equitable economic exchange relations and balanced and cooperative political relations between societies because large-scale conflict (i.e., warfare) destroys the infrastructural base of all institutional domains. Under these conditions, we expect geo-cultural formations in inter-societal systems to emerge and potentially diffuse. The degree to which these formations and dynamics dominate over geo-economics and geo-politics in inter-societal systems depends upon the equivalence among societies with respect to their institutional bases— particularly, their economic, political, educational, and scientific institutional domains—and to the degree that the corporate units, especially communities and organizations, are structurally and culturally equivalent. Internally, infrastructure development is an important driver of institutional change beyond the institutional domains of the economy and polity. Widespread institutional development expands relations among virtually all other institutions— kinship, education, religion, science, sport, arts, etc. As communities grow and all institutional activities expand, the generalized symbolic media and the emerging ideologies and normative systems of each institution not only expand but also interact and blend together to create meta-ideologies that feed back into the general culture of generalized ideologies, values, texts, and even technologies. For example, the rapid transition of China into the second most productive society in the world was possible by virtue of dramatic expansion of the nation’s infrastructure, which was stimulated by Chinese corporate units (especially organizations and communities) and foreign investments in promoting manufacturing through creating and taking advantage of a large pool of inexpensive labor, with additional hopes of cultivating the largest domestic consumer market in the world. As this process of internationalization, “marketization”, and infrastructural development unfolded over the last 50 years in China, the “culture of capitalism” in advanced post-industrial societies diffused into China, which further promoted a geo-cultural formation of neoliberalism among western post-industrial societies and China, as well as other Asian nations. This cross-cultural convergence of corporate units in economy, kinship, sport, education, and other domains became more

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prominent despite persisting structural differences, especially in modes of polity control. This same convergence can be seen in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, etc., although the emerging meta-culture of advanced economies may not be as cohesive and coherent as “world society” advocates contend. Moreover, the recent trend in China for centralized control stemming from concerns that markets and capitalism generate ideologies that may go against what is repressive state apparatus should not be surprising and, in the end, may lead to an increasing divergence of the west with a China now more concerned with geo-political actions and control of its territories, re-asserting its control over what it perceives as its territories (e.g., Hong Kong, and more dangerously, Taiwan and other islands off Asia). Thus, while geo-economic forces led to some convergence of cultures of the west and China, it is also possible that geo-political conflict and economic competition could lead to divergence in a future world dominated by geo-political blocs and alliances. In the past, similar convergences in culture have occurred with infrastructural development and equivalence. For example, cross-cultural convergence among societies in the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca inter-societal systems was generated through advancement in transportation infrastructure (e.g., large-scale road systems). On a less developed scale, the consolidation of Hawaii, long before statehood, represents a similar convergence with unification under a single political leader and the expansion of physical infrastructure. The same was likely the case in Indonesia as the island cultures converged with infrastructural development for travel among the islands. Similarly, societies on the Philippine islands were unified by geo-politics and geo-economics that generated new infrastructure for travel, exchange, and communication. Additionally, most European societies formed from a consolidation of feudal structures that emerged after the collapse of Rome during the Dark Ages, that were not so “dark” as dynamic as geo-political and geo-economic processes were forging nation-states from subpopulations that had common historical backgrounds and shared language or culture. Yet, it was the development of infrastructures—roads, canals, bridges, ports, market towns, urban areas for displaced serfs, etc.—that was critical to the unification and, in some cases, re-unification of the current societies of western Europe. Overall, it is important to identify and theorize the fundamental role of infrastructure in geo-political, economic, and cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems. Still, as noted above, as geo-political tension increases and leads to political conflict, divergence in cultures could occur—despite the convergence documented by the world culture school of thought.

7.1.5

Market Development and Exchange

Geo-economic inter-societal systems arise from exchange relations among populations. As Braudel (1979) and Collins (1990) outline, markets using generalized media of exchange, like money, will evolve into systems of horizontal markets for

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exchanging goods and services, and then if markets become sufficiently dynamic, vertical meta-markets emerge for the exchange of the media of exchange in lowerorder markets. Since the time that the earliest hunter-gatherers from different bands started exchanging bulk and prestige goods, market exchanges have not only increased the likelihood of geo-economic and geo-political inter-societal formations but have also been very much a force in creating geo-cultural inter-societal systems. Markets develop their own culture of norms, traditions, texts, and ideologies; and these can vary by the goods and services, distance, and volume of exchanges. Indeed, in the modern world-system, this is very evident when comparing the development of markets over the last two hundred years. Moreover, markets and their cultures are affected by technology and infrastructures, as is obvious when a company, like Amazon in the United States or Alibaba in China, sells enormous quantities of goods online and delivers them very rapidly. Information technologies and other communication technologies, coupled with the development of physical infrastructures for information, distribution, and transportation, escalate rates and speed of exchanges within societies and, increasingly, between societies. For example, the invention of container shipping, when coupled with information technologies and port infrastructures (docks, storage areas, computerized cranes, just-in-time inventory management, etc.), has dramatically increased rates of exchange among societies (Castells 2000; Dicken 2003). These same information and communication technologies coupled with the development of digital infrastructures have similarly made possible the global diffusion of culture arising from geo-economic inter-societal systems, even among societies that have geo-political tensions. Moreover, in contemporary societies, markets operate within all institutional domains and, thereby, mediate most activities among individuals and the corporate units organizing their activities. This structural equivalences among contemporary societies create a “market culture” around selling and buying almost everything, including self in labor markets and in markets revolving around buying and selling in economies, education, science, art, sport, dating, and marriage, (e.g., Habermas 1984, 1987; Polanyi 1944). Thus, as relations among societies are mediated by markets and the forces—technological and infrastructural—that makes them so dynamic, individuals’ experiences, world views, expectations, beliefs, norms, and other culturally oriented cognitive and emotional states will all begin to converge. Moreover, since changes in the dynamics of economies around the world lead to not only equivalence in the institution of the economies worldwide, the converging structure and culture of the economies also create structural equivalences in other institutional domains, such as kinship, education, science, and even arts. As these non-economic institutional domains reveal equivalence, they too promote cultural equivalences that lead to an overlay of a geo-cultural system on the unique cultural systems of diverse societies (Meyer 2000). For example, buying and selling in China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Mexico City, and virtually any urban area in the world are much the same, as are activities in other institutional domains, despite many unique or idiosyncratic features of each society’s institutional domains.

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And so, while dynamic markets expand geo-economic relations among societies to a truly global scale, they also have large effects on global culture (Meyer et al. 1997). But dependence and exploitation are also part of this process, as poor societies sell labor cheaply and often without pushing for technological and infrastructural development, or the expansion of domestic markets, that could reduce dependence on economic and/or political hegemons. Moreover, without the wealth created by infrastructures, technology, and dynamic markets, dependent societies remain poor and culturally isolated. Thus, unless geo-economic and geo-political relations among societies foster broader-based development of technologies, infrastructures, and markets, they culturally isolate society from the geo-cultural dynamics that are occurring among other societies, thereby increasing their dependence on more developed societies. Indeed, the view that the world is moving rapidly to a kind of one-world culture because of the spread of capitalism is probably overdrawn, whether this argument is made by Marxists, world-system analysts, or world culture advocates. Indeed, the arguments of dependency theorists are still very relevant, even with the expansion of geo-economic and geo-cultural inter-societal systems.

7.1.6

Political Domination and Culture

The political strategy of a super-ordinate society has large effects on the culture of subordinate societies in geo-political inter-societal systems. For example, the domination of a super-ordinate polity can apply coercion to force dominated populations to conform to the hegemon’s directives. An early strategy of hegemonic societies in an inter-societal system was to impose tribute systems in which a superior coercive force subdues populations as it marches out from its home and conquers new populations while leaving their institutional and cultural structures largely intact but, creating a coercive and administrative force to collect tribute. For example, Roman legions and administrators imposed a formula for a tribute that was used to support local Roman garrisons and funnel vast wealth to Rome. In this case, the culture of the subordinate society does not change much because the institutional systems were not forced to change. However, some change is inevitable because slaves were often taken from subordinate societies and some of the subordinated population was forced to serve administrators, military units, and other corporate actors of the super-ordinate societies. Yet, in the end, tribute systems preserve cross-cultural differences between subordinate and super-ordinate societies. As a result, tribute systems tend to inhibit the evolution of geo-cultural inter-societal systems and minimize cross-cultural convergence among societies. In the case of the Roman inter-societal system, we observe two general cultural systems: that of the Romans (as evidenced by the physical structures and infrastructures that they constructed) and that of the conquered population in Eurasia and North Africa. And so, when the Romans began to retreat to their home base, the culture that remained was not dramatically changed

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from before the Romans arrived, even though domination often lasted many decades, even centuries. Some change was inevitable if populations grew if markets proliferated, or infrastructures extended to the conquered population, but such was not the strategy of the Roman empire, at least at the beginning. The decline of geo-political domination and retreat of super-ordinate society to its home base creates conditions for the formation of geo-cultural systems that promote cross-cultural convergence and the diffusion of global cultural models. This geo-cultural system is often derived from the movement of religious ideologies and the larger culture that these can generate. For example, the last vestiges of the Roman empire were, in fact, more of a geo-cultural system imposed by the Roman Catholic Church, in which (a) the religious beliefs of Catholic Christianity became the symbolic base of power, demanding doctrinal orthodoxy from members of the empire (the symbolic base of power), (b) the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church as well as the legal system attached to this bureaucracy became the administrative base of power, (c) the Pope became the supreme leader dominant leader of this bureaucracy and legal system, (c) and the wealth of the church allowed the pope to use mercenaries to impose the coercive base of power against those feudal estates and city-states that might resist rule by the church. However, the geo-cultural systems may not form during a period of hegemonic collapse. For example, as historically documented and theorized in the “rise and fall model” of Turchin (2003, 2006), the formation, consolidation, and disintegration of the Mongol Empire never induced the formation of a geo-cultural system among conquered Eurasian societies. The Mongol Empire was the largest empire in world history and primarily developed through the utilization of superior military technology (e.g., harnessed horses, chariots, and composite bows) and strategic raids and assaults on societies across Eurasia. Under the unification of Genghis Khan, the Mongol tribes quickly descended from the Central Eurasian Steppes to integrate many societies into a geo-political system of hegemonic domination based on perpetual military conquest. The strategy of the Mongol Empire was to literally tear through the countryside and urban areas, often killing much of the targeted population, and then, to seize the reins of power and impose tributes, or outright confiscation, of key resources. This strategy was effective in the short run, but the comparatively small size of the Mongol population required continual expansion and conquest. Accordingly, the Mongols invaded and conquered societies on a large geographic scale which included territories in the Middle East (but not Egypt where they were stopped), Eastern Europe, Central Asia, including China where they built large tent-like hurts outside of the buildings in the capital of Beijing rather than occupy stone buildings. The Mongols even sought to invade Japan and would have succeeded if not for a storm that destroyed the fleet of boats sent to invade Japan. The Mongol Empire created the largest geo-political system by utilizing superior military force to dominate much of the known world during the thirteenth century. This system was primarily built from a coercive base of power and with some successful use of the administrative base. However, the Mongol Empire never effectively developed a symbolic base or even an incentive base built from other

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inducements rather than the threat of coercion. And, because the Mongol population was generally small relative to conquered populations, this system of geo-political domination was not sustainable and dissolved over a century. During the reign of the Mongol Empire, the cultures of conquered societies did not change dramatically because there was little concerted effort by the Mongols to induce cultural conformity and change. Instead, the Mongols managed conquered societies with political and military coercion. And, over time, as control weakened and descendants of the Mongol tribes began to assimilate and merge into the general populations of conquered societies, the empire slowly disintegrated, with relatively little evidence that the Mongols had been there. In fact, the cultural legacy of the Mongol Empire was the adoption of horse and chariot technologies, as well as metal weapons, among Eurasian societies. And so, in this sense, the Mongols had a large effect on changing the military strategies and weaponry for conquest among Europe, the Middle East, and Asian societies after the fourteenth century. Accordingly, the Mongol Empire is defined as a geo-cultural system with two distinct cultures—those of the conquering Mongols and those of the conquered—with the Mongol culture slowly dissipating as the empire began to disintegrate as coercive forces left territories. Overall, the case of the Mongol Empire suggests the formation of geo-political systems of domination does not necessitate the formation of geo-cultural system. Alternatively, super-ordinate polities may utilize culture to reinforce and legitimate their hegemony in geo-political systems. For example, the Spanish Empire (and to a lesser degree, Portuguese Empire) employed political domination that sought to convert all of the indigenous societies to Catholicism and forced these societies to speak Spanish while subjecting local populations to various forms of exploitive plantation and mining work. This exploitation was supported and imposed by strategically placed garrisons of priests and military forces that, at the same time, “educated” the indigenous population in language and religion. The geo-cultural systems of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were generated by geo-political and geo-economic activities designed to subjugate the indigenous populations and to extract valued resources, such as gold, for export back to Spain or Portugal. Thus, polities that seek economic and political domination can impose cultural domination on subordinate populations. As a result, a geo-cultural system that revolves around the culture of a hegemonic society revolves; and when the hegemon or hegemons retreat to the home base after defeat by other marching states or by rebellions, or both, this culture remains largely intact. The cultural legacy of the Spanish and Portuguese among indigenous and mixed societies in Latin America and the Caribbean shows the aftermath of Spanish and Portuguese colonial efforts to create the basis for a geo-cultural system across this very large expanse of the globe. Yet, this geo-cultural inter-societal system has not ever become fully unified because of political and economic tensions among the societies of the Americas and Caribbean. This suggests geo-cultural inter-societal systems cannot assure a unified population if geo-economic and geo-political relations are problematic.

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Overall, we theorize that political domination can facilitate the creation a geo-cultural system if a super-ordinate society is sufficiently powerful relative to subordinate populations and has the goal of creating a common culture to legitimate geo-political and/or economic domination. However, as described above, other geo-political forms of domination, such as tribute systems, tend to leave intact the cultures of indigenous populations but often impose a high degree of coercion to reproduce power and control. It is important to note that an administrative base of power that uses coercion rather than incentive or symbolic bases of power will create social control problems that increase logistical loads on super-ordinate societies. Thus, imposing a symbolic base of power can mitigate against these logistical loads on a hegemon by legitimating geo-political and economic stratification among societies. Indeed, the fall of the Soviet Union is another example of a society engaged in geo-political domination without successfully imposing a geo-cultural system based on a common Soviet culture. In fact, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, only Russian-speaking populations remained allied with Russia after the 1990s. Even though it was a cohesive system, the Soviet Union unraveled rather rapidly during the 1980s, because of the reasons outlined by Collins (1978, 1986, 1995). Without geo-cultural integration, the Soviet Union was over-extended and not able to overcome the logistical loads of dominating a diverse and large set of Asian and European societies through coercion and tight administration. Similar to the Mongolian Empire, the size and duration of the Soviet Empire were limited because of their failure to create a geo-cultural system that could serve as a symbolic base of power that, in turn, could symbolically unify diverse populations. The duration of the Mongolian Empire was longer compared to the Soviet Union because it formed during the agrarian era where very different institutional systems existed compared to the industrial era where the cost of coercion and regulation had dramatically increased, and the rise of media could unify opposition to the coercive and administrative control of the Soviet Union. One of the best cases of the interplay between political domination and the formation of geo-cultural systems is the rise of the Islamic Empire. To some degree, the religion of Islam initially traveled along trade networks between societies in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and Central Asia. Eventually, warfare and geo-political conquest by armies pushing Islamic ideas, as well as its legal and educational systems, created elements of a geo-cultural system across a large expanse of the world. Moreover, the economies of Middle Eastern societies during this period were predominately agrarian, with developed infrastructures (e.g., roads and ports) and viable political and educational institutional systems. Thus, as Islamic culture entered societies via economic trade routes and geo-political domination, it infiltrated internal institutional systems creating s a theocratic polity, an education system devoted to instruction in Islam, a mosque system of religion that demanded ritualized appeals to Allah, and a codified legal system of Koran-based law. The result was the formation of a geo-cultural inter-societal system that encompassed the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Central Asia that facilitated and legitimated geo-political and economic domination of ruling

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caliphates from the seventh to thirteenth centuries. The cohesiveness of this geo-cultural system was, however, disrupted by the doctrinal split of Islam into two traditions—Sunni and Shia—but, even here, the overall culture converges and, in many societies today dominates both political and economic activity and, in many societies, not only religion but also education, kinship, and even the arts. And this cultural domination extends down the corporate units—communities, organizations, and groups that organize institutional activities (see Fig. 1.1). The emergence, diffusion, and resistance to the “Washington Consensus” over the last forty years represent a contemporary case of geo-cultural dynamics in the modern inter-societal system. After World War II, societies slowly adopted a set of cultural principles that induced an institutional shift toward rational social organization, scientific and professional expertise, individualism, and standardization (Meyer et al. 1997; Boli 2005). In the context of the geo-political and economic dynamics of the modern inter-societal system, this global cultural model instigated the widespread diffusion of the modern nation-state. In the 1970s, the economic fallout and collapse of the Bretton Woods money system, price volatility of oil, and stagflation pushed developing countries to borrow from international financial markets. However, in the early 1980s, several Latin American countries defaulted on their debt which prompted international financial institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) to prescribe a set of policies as conditions of “bailouts.” This prompted the emergence of the “Washington Consensus” which required countries to enact a series of regulatory and spending reforms designed to promote free-market capitalism (Babb and Kentikelenis 2021, Kentikelenis and Babb 2019; Babb and Carruthers 2008). Over the next couple of decades, these policies rapidly diffused across developing and emerging countries and, thereby, created a degree of institutional convergence. During this transition, the United States reasserted itself as a global hegemon, especially with the decline of the Soviet Union, through the promotion of a global cultural model based on free-market capitalism and democracy. However, the sustainability of U.S. hegemony remains largely in question given contemporary geo-political and economic dynamics (Wallerstein 2003), although many in WSA have been prone to emphasize the decline in the U.S. hegemony. In a world where geo-politics increases, this prediction may prove inaccurate. More recently, the rise of post-socialist countries (China and Russia) has challenged U.S. hegemony and provided an alternative to the Washington Consensus based on the hybrid model of state-driven capitalism. This started with the “crackdowns” by the secular communist party in China on free-market capitalism and, to a lesser degree, traditional education and region. Small traditional religions still exist, as does a significant Muslim subpopulation in China, but clearly the current political regime is working to convert key organizations in the economic, education, religious, legal, and even family corporate units. The incredible rate of economic growth in China over the last decades appears to be the dominant force pushing China, but clearly, the communist party and the current leader of this party have decided to rain in the corruption and over-speculation of the roaring capitalist economy. It is very likely that, as a result, the dynamism of the Chinese economy

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may decline, especially if China pursues what appear to be grandiose geo-political ambitions. Indeed, beginning with the inevitable vetting of the Hong Kong stock markets and special freedoms of all Hong Kong residents and, to a lesser degree, the markets in Shanghai, the corruption in the banking systems, the over-speculation in some industries such as the housing markets, the agenda of both lower and higher education, the efforts at neutralizing traditional religions, the state has taken even more control of all institutional domains in China. Geo-economics is to be dominated by geo-politics, as are domestic institutions. And, as China moves in this direction, back to policies that resemble those of Mao (but with a much more robust and dynamic economy), Chinese geo-economic and geo-political expansion may set off even more intense geo-economic conflict and, more importantly, geo-political tensions and warfare. Additionally, with Russian incursions in Eastern Europe, geo-politics are increasingly critical to understanding inter-societal systems as geo-economic—a prediction that goes against contemporary theorizing in world-systems analysis. However, the effect of this shift to geo-politics in a world dominated by capitalist market competition is difficult to predict the trajectory of modern inter-societal systems. Cultural convergence is likely to continue in the policies governing economic activities, but with geo-economic actors now constrained by political actors seeking to increase control over the domestic economy and other institutional domains, geo-political tensions may lead to geo-cultural tensions as China, Russia, and other East Asian societies move away from open democracies to more central control of their economic actors, including those many production facilities in China funded by external geo-economic and geo-political actors (Europe and the United States). For, once political domination occurs within and between societies, world level geo-cultural system of societies seems to be increasingly less like to evolve to its full dimensions—as “world society” theory predicts and as even Marxist predict as the contradictions of world-level capitalism lead to world-level socialism.

7.1.7

Economic Domination and Culture

The strategy of super-ordinate societies in the economic domination of subordinate societies determines the potential for an emergence of geo-cultural systems. More specifically, a geo-cultural system is unlikely to evolve, and subordinate societies will stay in the “periphery” of geo-economic relations if super-ordinate societies engage in the extraction and appropriation of a narrow range of resources, and if this extraction revolves around (a) limited infrastructural development in the dependent society, (b) use of indigenous agents to organize localized labor involved extraction, (c) bribing governmental agents in order to keep them from pushing for higher payments or build outs of new infrastructures, (d) use geo-political force or threats of force to keep competitors from offering higher payouts for resources. Such is the case because infrastructure for resource extraction and re-appropriation

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does not reach the majority of the population; wage payments are to a small proportion of the labor force; and salaries are not enough to allow workers to escape poverty. Under these conditions, the basic institutional structures of a society, including the rest of the economy, the polity, education, and science, do not change nor can their cultures move toward that of super-ordinate societies. And, as long as the leading hegemon can keep other “core” or even “semi-periphery” societies from offering better terms of exchange in resources, then the balancing operation in Emerson’s exchange (1962) scheme cannot be employed to better compensate subordinate societies (see Sect. 2.3.3 and Tables 2.1 and 2.2). This balancing strategy, however, can be used if the resources being extracted are in high demand by core societies and if the current exploitive society does not have the geo-political power to prevent another hegemon from entering more favorable financial terms with key actors in economy and polity of a dependent society. The converse of all these conditions discussed above will, in the long run, increase the likelihood of cultural convergence among super-ordinate and subordinate societies. And, in a geo-economic system with more equitable distribution of valuable resources and lower levels of stratification, the reversal converse of the above conditions is even more likely to occur. For example, in one scenario, economic actors from super-ordinate societies may invest in the infrastructure of subordinate societies to effectively leverage large populations of unskilled labor, thereby generating a spillover effect into all sectors of a society. In another scenario, economic actors from super-ordinate societies may seek to produce goods and services in subordinate societies because of the relatively lower costs of production, thus creating a higher likelihood of technology transfer, skill development, and investment infrastructure to facilitate trade. These situations will inevitably bring competition pursuing the same low-cost strategy that, in turn, will raise wages and the standard of living of populations in subordinate societies. As a result, wage structures will increase over time, while key infrastructures (e.g., roads, ports, and communication technologies) will expand, thus allowing indigenous institutional systems, especially education and polity, to have needed resources for domestic development. Moreover, this will inevitably lead to substantial technological advancement as working populations and economic actors in subordinate societies learn from economic actors from super-ordinate societies. The economic success of East Asian societies over the last 75 years (e.g., The Four Asian Tigers) shows how preferential geo-economic relations between super-ordinate (e.g., United States) and subordinate societies (e.g., South Korea and Taiwan) can lead to substantial economic advancement and the potential for geo-cultural systems to emerge with infrastructural equivalency. The transition from industrial to post-industrial production accelerates the development of formerly subordinate societies and increases the potential for these societies to expand trade and investment relations with other societies. Accordingly, as these economically mobile societies develop and increase the number of trade and investment partners, hegemonic societies in geo-economic systems will lose their exchange advantage. Additionally, formerly subordinate societies undergoing

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rapid development can cultivate local consumer markets that will reduce their dependence on foreign economic actors. As a result, formerly subordinate societies can “break out” of economic dependency and transition into semi-peripheral or core roles within networks of geo-economic relations. For example, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and other emerging economies show how the transition to post-industrial production (e.g., finance and business services) from investment in public infrastructure and education, coupled with expanding trade and investment relations with other societies and cultivating local consumer markets, accelerated their development and reduced their economic dependency on advanced economies over the last 40 years. It is important to note these dynamics are relatively recent because, for much of the last 500 years, economic actors in super-ordinate societies could rely upon political actors in promoting their interest in subordinate societies (e.g., Arrighi 1994). And under these conditions, hegemonic societies in geo-economic systems could engage in more broad-based economic extraction and build up infrastructures while restructuring important institutions in subordinate societies, such as the polity and education, as they modernized the economy of these societies. For example, the British Empire significantly invested in the Middle East for oil production, thereby eventually leading them to lose control of the infrastructure and productive facilities and distribution of productive outputs. And, in societies like India, the empire changed the political structure, created a larger and more educated civil service, and expanded educational opportunities in addition to expanding the economy, thereby setting up demise of the British as colonialists. The Spanish Empire in the Americas was another example of this consolidation between economic and political actors in hegemonic societies where Spanish colonialism was allowed to spread across Central and South America without fear of intervention from other geo-political power (at least for a time before North American settlement of other world powers like Portugal, England, and France). In all of these and other cases, changes in institutional systems and infrastructure, along with the cultures of subordinate societies, eventually led to the decline of hegemonic domination in geo-economic systems, resulting in and super-ordinate societies forming political alliances with their colonies, engaging in more open and less exploitive exchange in markets within and between societies, and thereby, allowing former competitors in the geo-political and geo-economic arenas access to resources of formerly dependent societies. The result was change in institutional structures (and the corporate units from which they are constructed) that led to geo-cultural convergence between formerly super-ordinate and subordinate societies. Thus, by the dynamics specified in Emerson’s exchange model, reduction in dependence and exploitive relations could lead to cultural changes and emergence of a geo-cultural inter-societal system, although cross-cultural diversity among African, American, and Asian societies remains. However, the high degree of cross-cultural isomorphism in key dimension of economic, political, and educational systems, suggests these changes generated convergence toward a global cultural model (Meyer et al. 1997; Boil 2005; Meyer 2009). Even though the geo-culture systems are not dominant in most cases, these systems evolved from

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complete cross-cultural diversity to a global system of modernity, as the “world society” scholars would argue.

7.2

A General Model of Geo-Cultural Dynamics

As with all long-term social processes, the evolution of inter-societal systems is influenced by unique historical conditions. There is always a particular set of temporal, social, and ecological conditions; and yet, a more general scientific theory searches for commonalities across cases of phenomena and adopts a higher level of abstraction to identify and explain the phenomena. Put simply, a scientific theory aims to develop generalized explanatory models of underlying dynamics that can account for historical diversity. Accordingly, to theorize inter-societal systems, we start with the basic proposition that geo-cultural dynamics are intertwined with geo-economic and geo-political processes. Historically, we have very limited cases of inter-societal systems that are exclusively dominated by geo-cultural dynamics. We may find strong geo-cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems of pre-literate societies at the same stage development, or nearly so, in the evolution of human societies. In Fig. 7.1, we have modeled the dynamics that we are trying to explain, extracted from Fig. 1.3 in Chap. 1. The key questions for a generalized explanatory model of geo-cultural dynamics are the following: (1) Why does the culture of one society diffuse to another? and (2) What are the mechanisms driving this diffusion? Geo-cultural diffusion induces societies to become structurally equivalent in the organization of their institutional domains and, as byproduct of institutional dynamics, structurally equivalent in their system of stratifications. Structural differences among societies decreases the likelihood of a geo-cultural system forming across these societies. Although diffusion may instigate the processes of social change, it cannot by itself lead to cultural convergence in societies with any degree of extant institutional differentiation and stratification. And so, even though culture can induce some changes, more fundamental structural changes need to occur for culture to diffuse easily from one society to another; and these changes are often imposed by a super-ordinate society in an inter-societal system, or less dramatically, developed by “cultural scripts” of a geo-political or geo-economic hegemon. In Table 7.1, we introduce a set of propositions on geo-cultural formations for developing a generalized model of these inter-societal systems. Not all of these are explanatory propositions but, in essence, scope conditions that establish the range of phenomena on which we develop propositions. The basic elements of culture in society emerge from the human capacity for spoken and then written language (followed by other languages like mathematics and computer algorithms) and the texts, technologies, stocks of knowledge, values, and generalized ideologies at the societal level of organization and meta-ideologies generated by institutional domains. As discussed in Chap. 1, institutional differentiation creates a generalized symbolic media for discourse within an institution that is also exchanged among

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Fig. 7.1 Conceptualizing culture at a high level of abstraction in geo-cultural inter-societal systems

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Table 7.1 Elements of societal culture and geo-cultural formations in inter-societal systems Scope conditions 1. At the highest level of abstraction, the culture of a society can be conceptualized as consisting of language or languages organized into: A. Texts B. Technologies C. Stocks of knowledge D. Values E. Generalized Ideologies 2. At the highest level of abstraction, institutional domains differentiate towards more relative autonomy and develop their own distinctive generalized medium of exchange which in turn becomes: A. The foundation for ideologies legitimating and regulating actions within institutional domains B. The foundation for the norms instantiated in the corporate units operating within an institutional domain C. The foundation for institutional norms cutting across corporate units in an institutional domain that becomes instantiated into the norms regulating the division of labor in corporate units operating within an institutional domain D. The symbolic elements (generalized symbolic media) in and, hence, foundation for the construction of, meta-ideologies from the dominant institutional domains in a society that are, in turn, invoked to legitimate the unequal distribution of resources by corporate units to individuals 3. At the highest level of abstraction, the generalized symbolic media operating within and between institutional domains are: A. The valued resources distributed to individuals by the corporate units from which each institutional domain is built up B. The valued resources distributed unequally to categories of persons, thereby forming one basis of societal stratification C. This foundation for the formation of the codification of meta-ideologies from the institutional domains of a society that, in turn, is used to legitimate the unequal distribution of resources and the stratification more generally D. The foundation for generalized ideologies operating at a societal level that integrate institutional ideologies and meta-ideologies with the generalized values, technologies, stocks of knowledge, and prominent texts in the culture of a society 4. Geo-cultural intersocietal systems reveal varying degrees of isomorphic relations in the cultural systems outlined above and in Fig. 7.1 Propositions: 5. The convergence of cultural systems of societies into geo-cultural formations is a positive and additive function of: A. The degree of social structural equivalence across societies with respect to: 1. Their profile of institutional differentiation 2. Their organization of corporate units within institutional domains 3. Their rates and breadth of market exchange among societies 4. Their respective profiles of stratification legitimated by meta-ideologies and generalized ideologies B. The rates and breadth of market exchanges among societies (continued)

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Table 7.1 (continued) Propositions: C. The degree to which societies have common geo-political goals which, in turn, are a function of: 1. The degree of proximity to each other geographically 2. The degree to which they have an interest in forming geo-political coalitions and alliances against a common societal or intersocietal system 6. The likelihood that societies will not develop geo-cultural formations is inversely related to the conditions in 5-A and 5-B above, and positively related to: A. Their geographical distance from each other B. The degree to which one is dominant over others and engages in coercive domination of another society C. The degree to which this coercive domination is accompanied by exploitive geo-economic relations, in which: 1. The hegemon’s resource extraction is narrowly focused 2. The willingness of the hegemon’s to invest in infrastructural development is low 3. The hegemonic actors rely on indigenous economic actors’ exploitation of workers in the extraction of resources for export by the hegemon 4. The hegemonic economic actors are support by coercive forces of geo-political actors 5. The hegemonic actors use bribes and other incentives to buy off indigenous political actors 6. The capacity of hegemonic actors, whether economic or political, to isolate a dependent society from engaging in geo-economic or geo-political alliances with other hegemonic actors

institutional domains (see Table 1.1). For most of human history, most societies were based on kinship, with diverse activities of individuals within the institution of kinship marking the beginnings of differentiation of new institutional domains.2 The prominence and singularity of kinship in early societies explains the higher likelihood of cultural convergence among early societal forms. The structural basis for these early societies was dictated by kinship until advanced horticulture and the agrarian era when societies began to evolve and experience the emergence of new institutional domains. Accordingly, distinctive generalized symbolic media were developed (see Table 1.2) within these institutional domains that, in turn, became the foundation for ideologies legitimating and regulating actions, divisions of labor, and stratification among individuals and corporate units within these domains. Generalized symbolic media have a special property: they are also a resource that is valuable to humans, and hence, it becomes one of the principal valued resources distributed by corporate units in various institutional domains. Each of these media is valuable to humans—as is obvious for money, power, piety, love and loyalty, knowledge, and other media outlined in Table 1.2. Moreover, receiving shares of these valuable symbolic media generates additional intrinsic rewards such See Abrutyn and Tuner (2022) for an analysis of the first six human institutions, as evolved out of kinship.

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as honor, prestige, and positive emotions that are also unequally distributed (Turner 2010a, b, 2015) in all societies. We theorize the emergence of geo-cultural inter-societal systems, and its associated dynamics of diffusion and convergence, are primarily driven by the structural equivalence between societies. Put simply, when the structural profile of societies—that is, institutional domains and stratification systems—are similar, it is likely that their cultures will converge. However, the domination of one society by another often works against structural equivalence between societies because the super-ordinate society enact strategies to reproduce geo-political and/or economic domination which does not promote the convergence in structures and cultures.

7.2.1

Explanatory Principles on Geo-Cultural Inter-societal Systems

We develop a more theoretical model of the key dynamics that determine the likelihood of geo-cultural formations emerging with geo-political and/or geo-economic strategies pursued by super-ordinate societies in inter-societal systems (see Fig. 7.2). For geo-political hegemons, the relative use of four bases of consolidated power has the greatest effect on institutional change, equivalence, and the likelihood of geo-cultural systems emerging. More specifically, the amount of coercive power mobilized relative to administrative, symbolic, and incentive bases of power determines how domination works for, or against, cultural conversion. A low amount of coercive power can have positive effects on changing institutional systems, but a high level of use of coercive power or threat of its use often works against institutional change toward institutional convergence between subordinate societies and the hegemonic society. However, the strategic use of coercive power can also, under certain conditions, work toward institutional change. For example, the brutal use of coercive power by the Spanish Empire to force the indigenous populations of the Americas had consequence, once that power receded, of creating a geo-cultural system in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Differences in the organization of political and in economic institutional systems have prevented the cultural similarities of Spanish-speaking and Catholic populations in the Americas from fully leveraging these cultural convergences. In contrast, coercive force used in the Middle East to institutionalize Islamic religion has created a somewhat more coherent set of geo-cultural systems, despite the division of Islam into two factions. More generally, if hegemonic societies in geo-political systems use administrative, symbolic, and incentive bases of power to foster institutional change (after securing a sure base of power), there is a greater likelihood for structural and cultural equivalence and the emergence of a geo-cultural system. For example, the utilization of these bases of power by the British Empire induced a high degree of convergence in the institutional systems of India, South Africa, and Nigeria and a limited degree of cultural convergence (e.g., language use, government bureaucracies, and to a lesser degree, economic development around markets and trade).

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Institutional changes encourage more technology transfer from super-ordinate to subordinate societies, although if this transfer is limited to extraction of a specific set of resources, the effects of the transfers will be less extensive. And similarly, if infrastructure development is also confined to gaining access to limited resources-and transporting these to superordinate societies, the effects of infrastructural development on institutional change will be reduced dramatically. However, if the policies imposed by super-ordinate societies substantially change the economy, polity, education, and science in subordinate societies, these changes will lead to more technological development within the subordinate societies which increases the transfer of technology from super-ordinate to subordinate societies, especially if corporate actors are utilizing labor from the populations of subordinate societies in manufacturing goods for export to broader consumer markets as well as for domestic consumer markets. And if this transfer of technology increases economic diversification into a more productive market system, along with a more effective state bureaucracy that can collect taxes for public investment in infrastructure, then structural and cultural convergence will increase and may create a geo-cultural formation that is added to the geo-economic and political formations of an inter-societal systems. As shown in Fig. 7.2, and to be examined shortly, geo-economic strategies employed in economic exchange induces institutional change through new productive activities and expanded markets. As a result of this economic development, a higher rate of technology transfer will occur between societies often leading to the building up of local infrastructures. These changes will lead to increased structural and cultural equivalence and, hence, produce at least some elements of a geo-cultural inter-societal system. Even plantation economies, if they lead to economic and domestic market expansion, can have these effects, just as a colonial administrative base of power-use in societies can lead to institutional change, technology transfer, and infrastructural development. And, shown in the lower box of Fig. 7.2, a plantation or colonial strategy of economic domination can lead to high levels of capital investment by economically hegemonic societies which will lead to economic expansion, diversification of production, and distribution in both domestic and export–import markets. As a result, structural and cultural equivalence will increase and potentially lead to the emergence of a geo-cultural inter-societal system. The case of Vietnam exemplifies this process outlined in Fig. 7.2. Although the transition occurred after the French colonial period and a proxy war between the United States and China, capital investment in Vietnam greatly expanded and created greater productive facilities that turned the communist North Vietnam into a polity (much like China after Mao) seeking foreign investment for capitalist market expansion. Thus, while the United States and South Vietnam lost the war, Western Capitalism ironically prevailed and has led to significant institutional change, technology transfers, and infrastructural development, all of which have increased the dynamism of Vietnam in the global economy. Overall, by tracing the arrows across the theoretical model in Figure 7.2, we can develop hypotheses about the geo-political and economic dynamics and formations

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that lead to the emergence of geo-cultural formations in inter-societal systems. Moreover, we can identify the mechanism driving institutional equivalence and, hence, convergence of culture between super-ordinate and subordinate societies.

7.3

The Interplay of Geo-Cultural, Political, and Economic Dynamics

We summarize the effects of geo-political and economic domination on geo-cultural dynamics in Table 7.2. More specifically, Table 7.2 provides an inventory of the key forces operating to create inter-societal geo-cultural systems that are applicable to systems composed of hunting and gathering societies to contemporary societies. As discussed above, it is important to identify the interplay between these dynamics and geo-economics and geo-political dynamics. We theorize, these interplays are Table 7.2 Geo-cultural convergence and inter-societal systems 1. Under conditions of no or very little geo-political or geo-economic domination, the diffusion of culture from one society to another, thereby forming an geo-cultural inter-societal system, is an additive function of: A. Shared language and history B. Proximity in geographical space C. Structural equivalence in: 1. Level of differentiation of institutional domains 2. Level and form of stratification D. Rate and diversity of economic exchange among corporate units E. Level of communications technology and infrastructure 2. Under conditions of no geo-political domination, and where the conditions listed under 1A to 1E do not prevail, the diffusion of culture from the dominant to dependent society is less likely to occur 3. Under conditions of geo-political domination revolving around all bases of political power, the diffusion of culture from the dominant to dependent society, thereby forming a geo-cultural convergence, is most as an additive function of: A. The degree to which political domination involves efforts at institutional change in the dependent society toward increased structural equivalence B. The transfer of technologies from dominant to dependent society C. The buildup of the infrastructures of the dependent by the dominant society in ways that generate increased structural equivalence D. The degree to which economic exchanges occur under conditions results in of political domination in which exchanges revolve around: 1. Resource extraction is across a wide range resources in the dependent society 2. Require technological, capital, and infrastructure investments dominant economic and political actors 3. Involve the creation of diverse markets, including meta-markets and stable media of exchange, within the dependent society (continued)

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Table 7.2 (continued) E. The degree to which domination involves all bases of power, and particularly the administrative, symbolic, and incentive bases over coercive bases F. The degree of initial convergence of the institutional domains of the dependent society to those of the dominant society 4. The diffusion of culture leading to geo-cultural convergence is less likely under conditions of geo-political domination, where the coercive and administrative bases dominate over the symbolic and incentive bases, and where the converse of the conditions listed under 3-A to 3E above do not prevail 5. Under conditions of geo-economic domination, the diffusion of culture leading to geo-cultural convergence between the economically dominant and dependent society increases as an additive function of: A. The rate and breadth of the goods and services exchanged as well as the diversity of productive corporate units of the dependent society that are play B. The relative lack of domination by the polity of the economic hegemons, especially with respect to: 1. Heavy use of the coercive base of power 2. Imposition of a tributes system over reciprocal exchanges economic goods involving money as the medium of exchange in markets C. The extent to which exchange allows the dependent society to diversify its economy D. The degree to which dominant economic and/or political actors can integrate institutional activities, especially in patterns of co-ownership with economic actors of other societies and, if relevant, to patterns of political control by corporate units in polity engaged in executing coercive, administrative, incentive, and symbolic bases of power

more conductive to geo-cultural formations alongside geo-economic and geo-political formations. What is critical are the forms of geo-political and geo-economic formations take, as we have described in the previous sections.

7.3.1

Geo-Political Strategies of Domination and Institutional Change

The dynamics that operate to increase the likelihood that geo-political and/or geo-economic dynamics will also lead to geo-cultural dynamics are outlined in Fig. 7.2. On the left side of Fig. 7.2 is the background features of the dynamic processes leading to the formation of a geo-cultural system. Some are historical factors, such as past convergence of societies through earlier geo-economic and geo-political dynamics, as well as the historical accident of populations being geographically approximate to each other and/or not separated by ecological barriers, such as high mountains, expansive deserts, or bodies of water such as oceans. The next set of boxes in the model emphasize the geo-political formations and the relative use of the four bases of power.

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When coercive power is the dominant means of social control in a geo-political inter-societal system, the initial use of this power may have some effect on institutional change, but the degree and extent of coercive power on rates and degree of institutional change vary with the strategy of the dominant polity. More specifically, we conceptualize the relationship between coercive power and institutional change as logarithmic where coercive power initially accelerates the degree and rate of institutional change that levels off. For example, if a tributary form of domination is employed or a strategy like that of the Mongols, a dominant polity uses coercive force to conquer subordinate populations, followed by the threat of coercive power and tight administration to make sure that resources demanded by the dominant polity are provided, but this approach may not involve dramatic changes in the rest of the institutional domains organizing the conquered population. As is emphasize by the positive (+) arrows flowing from administrative, symbolic, and incentive bases of power to institutional change, we contend these bases exert a constant effect on institutional change. If these bases of power are used individually, and especially if coercive power is used as backup base of power, then cultural change will ensue with changes in the institutional domains of subordinate societies. And in some cases, like the Spanish Empire in the Americas, when all four bases of power are imposed on subordinate societies, the culture of these societies will rapidly change. In the Spanish case, their overwhelming power advantage was utilized to convert a series of indigenous societies and inter-societal systems into a new system of colonies composed of societies of vastly varying size that were and still are culturally similar because of the isomorphic pressures imposed by the Spanish Empire. Indeed, as the Spanish retreated from defeat by other societies of Europe and the United States, the societies that emerged were all Spanish speaking (except for pockets of more aboriginal populations in difficult to reach habitats like high altitude mountains ore dense rainforests) and revealed similar market economies, religious beliefs, and patterns of kinship and education as well as similar patterns of large urban vis-à-vis outlying community organization. Coupled with trade, migration, and legacies of political conflict, their institutional systems converged toward a common cultural model.

7.3.2

Geo-Economic Strategies of Domination and Institutional Change

The box below geo-political political strategies in Fig. 7.2 highlights some of the geo-economic strategies outlined in Table 4.1. Exchanges of bulk goods, whether in simple systems of hunting and gathering and horticultural societies or complex systems of post-industrial and industrial societies, can lead to institutional change in societies dependent on these exchanges. This effect comes mostly through the expansion of infrastructures for movement of goods from one society to another

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(note the arrows from to the extensiveness of infrastructural development). These arrows are signed differently. From bulk goods, and often accompanying exchange of ritualized or symbolic objects, it would take a great deal of exchange to affect the development of infrastructure. Accordingly, we conceptualize this as an inverse logarithmic effect where initial exchange has little effect on infrastructure development, but this effect grows with further exchange (hence, the [=/+] sign connecting the top three boxes with to the box denoting infrastructural development on the right). The exchanges outlined in the top two boxes are more likely to occur in systems composed of pre-literate societies, where the rate of exchange was low and stable, and moreover, these exchanges occurred among societies where kinship rather than economy or any other institutions was dominant. But the “colonial” pattern outlined in Table 4.1 involves more of a permanent presence of an economic hegemon where some degree of technology transfer to the dependent society occurs. Since colonial societies tend to dominant politically, development of infrastructures— roads, ports, warehouses, tracks, canals, and other structures for extracting and moving resources out of the dependent society to the hegemon—are likely to be more extensive. And, infrastructures, per se, can change corporate-unit activities and, if sufficiently extensive, also change institutional domains, and hence, the culture of these domains. The next two geo-economic strategies outlined in the boxes exert logarithmic effects [+/=] on infrastructural development. More specifically, selective extraction (the “plantation strategy”) and tributary strategies initially expand the infrastructures of subordinated societies to move resources out of the society to super-ordinate societies, but this development does not affect large-scale infrastructural development across the whole of the society. Rather, selective extraction leads to narrow development of infrastructures to strategically acquire and transport specific resources out of a society without wider development of societal infrastructures. Additionally, this strategy increases corruption through bribes and payments to agents in the polity and to agents in sectors where resources are extracted which further reduces investment in infrastructure development. The last two geo-economic strategies emphasize that (1) the degree of political domination, usually by the coercive and administrative bases of power, and (2) the level of capital investment of an economic hegemon in the subordinate society’s economy and infrastructure. If a dominating polity uses coercion and/or threats of coercion after initial conquest but relies mostly on administrative control and monitoring to extract resources, then some investment in building infrastructure for securing and transporting resources will occur. This targeted investment may alter the polity and economy, but probably not other institutional systems unless the economic hegemon is strategizing for very long-term domination. The best example of this strategy in the last century is British investment in the initial development of the oil industry in parts of the Middle East. In this case, institutional change did occur, especially in the economic base of the societies like Saudi Arabia, changed significantly but other institutions did not change to any great degree. As a result, the geo-cultural system from British economic domination was relatively

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under-developed, as it is today, despite the propensity of rich Arabs to purchase luxurious Western goods and to live, at least part time (unless exiled by political elites) in major cities of Western societies. And despite the spread of communication infrastructures and media system throughout the Middle East, these societies have been slow to adopt “western culture.” In contrast, when a more geo-economic strategy by a hegemonic society is used to secure larger resources from subordinate societies, and especially so if the resource is less expensive labor, then the hegemon will invest substantial resources in the economies of subordinate societies (e.g., building factories or creating agricultural or mining structures for extraction and export, but perhaps also for distribution within the dependent society). Additionally, this investment inevitably leads to more extensive infrastructural investments, either directly or indirectly through taxes on domestic economic activity, which is used by the polity of the subordinate society to finance large-scale development of infrastructures. In either case, institutions are likely to change and, hence, the cultures of at least some of these institutions. This is especially the case in regard to institutional changes in education, the economy, and science if the polity of the subordinate society can extract money from societies investing in economic and infrastructural projects. The case of development in China over the last 50 years is an example of this kind of cultural change. The international economic mobility of China from the periphery to core of the world economy demonstrates the interplay of foreign investment, infrastructural development, and cultural changes arising from modernization. As a result, world-systems theorists often argue, perhaps prematurely, that China is poised and aspiring to ascend to economic hegemony in the modern world-system by and replacing the United States as the economic epicenter of world investment and trade, just as the United States replaced the British Empire. In fact, the United States’ investing in the rebuilding of European infrastructure through the Marshall Plan after World War II is another example where massive economic and infrastructural development led to increased convergence of American culture across western Europe, a trend that continues today with the rise of American telecom companies (e.g., Google and Meta) and their increasing penetration of European societies.

7.3.3

Structural and Cultural Equivalences

Overall, the geo-political and economic strategies of super-ordinate societies are important for determining the degree of structural and cultural equivalence in inter-societal systems. Strategies of geo-political and economic domination may induce institutional change in subordinate societies with increases in technology transfers and the development of infrastructure. In turn, these changes increase the propensity for cultural convergence within inter-societal systems. Put simply, structural equivalence leads to cultural equivalence, setting in motion a cyclical

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pattern that has accelerated over time with the advancement of science and technology. While the likelihood of a worldwide geo-cultural inter-societal system plurality is relatively low, the convergence of cultures across those societies within a particular inter-societal system still has large effect on geo-political in inter-societal systems. For example, in the modern world economy, societies in geographic and cultural proximity with each other are more likely to engage in sustained and intensive trade (Zhou 2011). Part of this interplay of inter-societal dynamics is explained by past historical convergence that has carried forward through geo-economic dynamics, some of which emerged after the geo-political conflicts that reinforced by geo-cultural convergence among these societies. Thus, once a geo-cultural system exists in a general inter-societal system, it feeds back and promotes geo-economic and geo-political dynamics.

7.4

Conclusions

Overall, contemporary theories of inter-societal systems (e.g., world-systems analysis) have underemphasized the important role of geo-cultural dynamics. While the world society perspective emerged to explain modernization and cross-cultural convergence among contemporary societies, we contend geo-cultural formations and dynamics have existed since the earliest inter-societal systems. This conclusion has led to this chapter where, in a tentative way, we introduce theoretical models and propositions on the formation and dynamics of geo-cultural systems. Even though theorizing the formation and dynamics of culture in inter-societal systems is elusive, it is as significant as resource exchanges among preliterate societies in sustaining inter-societal systems. And such was most likely the case when the societies engaged in exchange were already structurally equivalent being organized within kinship—first the nuclear family and then more complex systems based on unilineal descent. Thus, for most of history, geo-cultural dynamics were interwoven with geo-economic dynamics. Moreover, the geo-political dynamics of inter-societal systems played an important role in shaping the formation of culture. Specifically, the degree of power use and the bases of this power determine the extent of geo-cultural convergence in inter-societal systems. Therefore, in theorizing the geo-economic and political dynamics of inter-societal systems, it is essential to explain their interplay with geo-cultural dynamics. Since the beginning of the Holocene (10,000 BCE), societies have grown and differentiated in a predictable pattern that created a degree of structural equivalence among societies. This equivalence was not as clear-cut as in kin-based societies of the distant past (though some survived well into the twentieth century) but advanced horticultural, agrarian, industrial, and post-industrial societies reveal very similar institutional structures and corporate units within these broader institutional

References

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structures. Even seemingly different post-industrial societies, such as the United States and Russia, show evidence of considerable structural equivalence, despite divergent meta-ideologies from different political economies. Thus, much of what makes the contemporary inter-societal system viable is the degree of cultural convergence around the use of similar technologies, markets systems (especially for international trade), infrastructures, and corporate units within at least some institutional domains (e.g., Boli 2005; Meyer 2009). And, even when ideologies vary, the culture of many other institutional domains converges, thus allowing for the contemporary inter-societal system to function. Indeed, we contend the contemporary core–periphery hierarchy of the world economy and international mobility within this hierarchy is a function of economic, political, and cultural dynamics of the modern world-system. Accordingly, we offer a new theoretical framework for understanding the interplay of these dynamics and predicting the evolution of the modern world-system. The theoretical models and propositions in this chapter are only a tentative beginning of a more scientific perspective for examining geo-cultural dynamics in inter-societal systems. Even though this theorizing is rather preliminary, we hope this framework demonstrates that it is possible to develop abstract theoretical models and propositions about these understudied processes in early and modern inter-societal systems.

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Epilogue

The Invasion of Ukraine and Tension Between Geo-Political and Geo-Economic Forces The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in the winter of 2022 occurred just as we had finished a full draft of this book. We begin with this event because it draws attention to a consistent theme in this book: world-systems analysis (WSA) has over-emphasized geo-economics in its focus on the rise of capitalism and its transformations that, as many believe, will expose the contradictions of capitalism and, thereby, lead to world-level socialism. In contrast, we suggest that an alternative outcome is a rise in geo-political conflict and the polarization of geo-political systems into antagonistic blocs of nation-states where alliances are formed based on geo-cultural convergences. This would fundamentally change the dynamics of both geo-economics and geo-politics in ways that question the implicit conviction of many about the fate of capitalism and the modern world system. Vladamir Putin’s imperialist ambition to re-establish the Soviet sphere of influence provides a glimpse into the future of the modern world system. And, the crackdown by the Chinese polity on both the domestic populations and economic sectors, while also staking claims over certain territories (e.g., Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet), suggests that there is the formation of a new a system that conceivably revolves around warfare and geo-politics where geo-cultural histories and convergences play a larger role that is normally recognized by WSA. The recent economic sanctions against Russia confirm that the capitalist world economy is quite developed because these sanctions are likely to cause long-run damage to the Russian economy, which has been stagnant over the last decade. In Russia, for example, money and property are geographically dispersed where assets held by Russian citizens can be confiscated in ways that do not allow the Russian government and its citizens, including its richest citizens (the so-called “Oligarchs”), to travel freely or to gain access to their funds held by foreign banks, much less their yachts docked in garden spots of Europe. As a result, the Russian government is limited in its capacity to “prop up” the ruble in international money markets and prevent economic collapse.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. H. Turner and A. J. Roberts, Inter-Societal Dynamics, Emerging Globalities and Civilizational Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12448-8

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At the same time, the implementation of increasingly restrictive sanctions against Russia has severely impacted its exports, especially natural gas and petroleum, as most western societies and few others around the globe have ceased to purchase Russian goods, resources, and services. Accordingly, this decline in Russian imports and exports has further reduced revenue and the valuation of the ruble in international markets. Moreover, some multinational corporations are suspending activities and closing facilities in Russia, thereby decreasing economic production and the inflow of foreign direct investment and accelerating a future collapse of the Russian economy. The result is that the ruble lost half of its value within 2 weeks of the invasion into Ukraine, although it may recover somewhat but will never be anything but a handicap for Russian in international trade. In the long run, this will inevitably limit Russia’s capacity to engage in geo-economic activity for lack of capital by virtue of the devalued ruble, sanctions, and the seizure of foreign assets. Moreover, as China sees what can happen if the West (Europe and North American) pulls away from investments in Russia, the prospect of the West doing the same to China in response to geo-political aggression is a greater possibility than most would have thought two years ago. What is evident, then, is that global capitalism has developed to the point where economic sanctions on political hegemons can be highly effective in counteracting naked imperialism. As Russia has now experienced, Western capitalist societies can reunite under NATO and impose severe sanctions on geo-political aggressors. Other societies cannot do so because they’re too dependent on Russia and China for economic and military aid. Nonetheless, it is a real possibility that a reinvigorated Western bloc will become a more integrated through the intensification and consolidation of geo-economic and geo-cultural relations which will change almost any prediction over the trajectory of inter-societal systems over the next 20 years. The invasion of Ukraine and the reaction of some key countries in NATO and elsewhere demonstrate geo-economics is being used as a geo-political strategy in retaliation to military aggression; and it is very likely to be utilized if other actors begin to engage in militarized imperialism. While an actor like China has a much more robust economy and other actors are dependent upon its patronage, a large-scale western retrenchment would be damaging to its geo-economic and geo-political ambitions in the long run. Moreover, more direct military engagement with Russian is real possibility, especially if Russia attacks North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members or seeks to invade of other societies to expand its sphere of influence. The same would be true if China sought to annex Taiwan by force, something that they could achieve but at a high cost in the long run. However, in both cases, economic sanctions are preferred because military engagements are problematic because of Russia’s and China’s nuclear arsenal and the potential for escalation. Yet, threats of its use will only toughen the resolve to stop such imperialism, albeit at great risks for what all have feared since the nuclear age began. For example, Putin activated Russia’s nuclear arsenal within the first week of the invasion, which only reinvigorated NATO and increased the demand for a

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geo-political alliance among Eastern European, Nordic, Western European, and North American countries. In fact, over the last few years, NATO has received requests by additional societies, such as Finland, even Switzerland, Georgia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and Ukraine, to join; and other societies formerly under Soviet “rule”—e.g., Poland and Czech Republic and even Soviet-leaning Hungary —are now members of NATO. The formation of the NATO power bloc was intentional to deter Russian invasion as Article 5 of the NATO Treaty would require directly military intervention. However, the small societies of Baltic area north of Ukraine—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—and societies south of Ukraine— Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania—are still at risk of invasion by Russia. Accordingly, the big question is whether economic sanctions are enough to deter Russia from invading other Eastern European societies in an almost manic effort to rebuild the Soviet Union? And if not, will Europe once again be engulfed in a world war, or even worse, will nuclear options be employed in conflict? Surprisingly, the propensity for a world war and nuclear conflict is not a prediction that WSA tends to consider. Especially since a world war of this magnitude would simply destroy the capitalist world economy that has been slowly built up over the last 500 years. The answer to these questions and potential outcomes requires an assessment of Putin’s mental state, as well as the capacity or willingness of other Russian actors to prevent the spread of geo-political conflict through assignation, staging a coup, and potentially instigating a civil war. If it is not possible to persuade Russian leaders to change strategies, then geo-politics will once again dominate inter-societal relations in the modern world system for decades to come and increasing the likelihood of a global war with nuclear arms. It is important to note that the effectiveness of economic sanctions attests to the accuracy of world-system analysis in stressing the importance of geo-economic interdependence in dictating the dynamics of the modern world-systems. However, the vulnerability of societies to geo-political incursions, and/or threats of use of nuclear weapons, supports our contention throughout this book that geo-politics will re-emerge in the modern world-system and potentially destroy it or create partitions of regional geo-political, economic, and cultural subsystems. Nonetheless, one thing is evident: capitalism is less likely to collapse because of any “internal contradictions” but, rather, because of geo-political conflict. And if geo-politics prevails, the result will not be global socialism but, instead, a multipolar system of regional blocs of economic and political actors engaged in ongoing conflict that has the potential to destroy the planet.

The Limitations of Prediction Despite the volatility and spontaneity of the invasion of Ukraine, a scientific theory of inter-societal dynamics increases the capacity to predict when these events will occur and the size and scope of their impact on inter-societal systems. We garnered

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from our models and propositions that geo-political activity would increase, potentially with large effects on geo-economic relations. This preliminary theory of inter-societal dynamics suggests Russia and China are likely to pursue geo-political strategies given the emerging multi-polarity of the modern world system. We expect Russian geo-political expansion to continue to rebuild the Soviet empire. The invasion of Ukraine, and geo-economic response of other countries, may bolster China to co-opt Taiwan and territories in Bhutan, India, Japan, Vietnam, and the South China Sea while investing in less-developed countries to extract natural resources for their development with the implied purpose of extending their sphere of influence over these societies. We argue this will inevitably lead to China invading Taiwan, an event that seems more likely given Russia’s recent actions and China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, which was in essence re-taking full control and eliminating the special status that Hong Kong has enjoyed since the days of the East India Company hundreds of years ago. And an invasion of Taiwan will likely trigger sustained geo-political conflict between China and the United States. All of these “predictions” are evident because of the geo-political and economic events in the modern world system over the last few decades. The models and propositions in this book provide a theoretical understanding of these empirical data to help in explaining and potentially predicting the development of geo-political, geo-economic, and geo-cultural formations and dynamics in the modern world system. However, these events may have been predicted by simply reading and contemplating about what has been occurring historically over the last half century. Accordingly, is it worth developing a general and scientific theory of inter-societal dynamics to understand and predict the trajectory of the modern world system? Our answer is in the affirmative. The models and propositions that we have offered in this book can be refined and improved as they are used to interpret, understand, and even predict the dynamics of the modern world system. Empirical researchers with greater access to data can test these propositions for refinement while developing new theoretical arguments and concepts to improve the models we have initially constructed in this book. As we have argued throughout this book, the main purpose of our preliminary attempt in generating a general theory of inter-societal dynamics is to promote scientific theorizing. If this kind of theorizing is done more frequently, then predictions can improve with increased understanding of the conditions that lead to the kinds of outbreaks of geo-political activity within the larger geo-economic world system. The current problem in WSA is that there has not been enough effort to formalize theories in the way that we propose. Predictions within WSA have been useful because of the focus on the historical evolution of capitalism over the last 500 years. In essence, these predictions rest on extrapolations of what has occurred in the past will also occur in the future. Most of these predictions are not based on a general theory of inter-societal dynamics in terms of models and propositions on the fundamental properties and dynamics driving inter-societal dynamics (e.g., Wallerstein 2003). Accordingly, the predictions of WSA are severely limited by the

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particularities of capitalism, the Westphalian inter-state system, and the “specter” of Marxist ideologies. As we have emphasized in the book, our effort in theorizing inter-societal dynamics is only a tentative beginning to what needs to occur in WSA. It is relatively easy to assert by extrapolations and intuitive predictions by scholars steeped in the data, and even easier to make confident assertions based on a scholar’s commitment to a particular ideology. Indeed, WSA, as practiced, can offer many insights, even without a general theory about the operative dynamics of inter-societal systems. Thus, it would not be surprising that the reaction of most WSA to our efforts would emphasize that our models and propositions would not make better propositions that current conceptualizations in the literature, as we outlined it in Chaps. 2 and 3. WSA has consistently been a prediction—not based on any reasonable assessment of the data thus far—that global socialism, and even a supra-national government operating under socialist assumptions, is the future of inter-societal systems. This assertion is purely ideological, and that is why it seems to us not to be a very good guide to the future. Good historians can predict future events from past events, until something unique occurs, that might have been predicable with a good theory. WSA has made a few insightful predictions about the development of capitalism and the world economy; and given the state of theorizing in WSA, it is not surprising that these “seat of the pants” predictions have proven somewhat accurate. Yet, what has been explained in these predictions? Explanations are often rather ad hoc, without much detail of the underlying forces that are operating. Increasing the level of abstraction of theorizing and seeking to identify the generic forces that are in play in geo-economic, political, and cultural inter-societal systems will provide much greater insight into the fundamental dynamics and formations of inter-societal relations. The intent of this book is to encourage scholars in the world-systems tradition to engage in this theoretical project. We doubt WSA could have predicted the invasion of Ukraine and resulting economic backlash. Nor could WSA have predicted the effectiveness of economic sections in deterring Putin from invading Ukraine. More importantly, the collapse of the Soviet Union and devolution of capitalism that could come with Russia’s imperialism are unexplained in contemporary WSA. If even a relatively small number of scholars in the world-systems tradition dedicate themselves to the kind of theorizing that we propose, inter-societal dynamics would be better understood. Starting with the Greek historian, Thucydides, or more “recently,” Ibn Khaldun, scholars have sought to develop clear theoretical principles about inter-societal relations. Even though these past scholars did not formalize their theoretical perspective, a careful reading reveals very clear generalizations and conceptualizations about the dynamics of geo-political conflicts within and between societies. However, this early historical work has permitted contemporary scholars, such as Peter Turchin and Randall Collins, to make theoretical contributions that have predictive value. What we have tried to do in this

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book is to extract these theoretical insights, synthesize them with insights from other scholars, to generate models and propositions about inter-societal dynamics and formations. If more people tried to do this kind of theoretical work more often in sociology and the social sciences, and even humanities more generally, it would be possible to offer more in-depth theoretical analyses of current and historical events and, eventually, make better predictions. For example, a re-reading of Teggart’s (1941) book, Theory and Processes of History, shows history can become a generalizing science by seeking to understand fundamental forces that drive history and that can be generalized to explain the dynamics of the social world. This is what Thucydides and Khaldun were doing, with contemporary historically oriented scholars, like Turchin and Collins, following this approach. It is a very short step from these types of analyses to more formal theorizing, as both these contemporary scholars have revealed in their own work. The key is for more scholars to engage in such exercises where generalizations beyond a particular case are stated more abstractly and, equally important, combined with other similar efforts. Therefore, we have written this book to encourage others to give this strategy for theorizing inter-societal dynamics. It is important to note a caveat to this conclusion. Prediction is difficult. The high degree of complexity in the way these many forces become manifest themselves and intersect in ways that cannot always measured much less theorized. For example, predicting weather systems is extraordinarily difficult given the complexity and dynamism of the atmosphere and climate drivers; the volume of data for testing predictions; and the requisite time and computational power required to formally model weather system. We encounter the same limitations in predicting inter-societal systems especially given the paucity of data and contemporary methods for testing theories. In inter-societal systems, the forces in play are, for the most part, known and their dynamics are well understood, but what is often difficult to know is the loadings of these forces and the often-unpredictable interplay of these forces, especially when their respective loadings cannot be precisely measured. Hence, predictions are often not so much “wrong,” but imprecise. Put simply, predictions over the last decades about inter-societal systems are rarely “way off,” but they are not as accurate as they could be with formal theorizing. Yet, even in something as complex as the dynamics of an inter-societal system, the dynamics are understood far more than we realize but are too difficult to predict in a precise manner because theories are imprecise. However, general and explanatory theorizing in the natural sciences have improved prediction in complex systems. Again, the purpose of this book is to start the progress toward this type of theorizing to improve the accuracy of predictions about inter-societal systems by identifying and explaining the fundamental properties and dynamics of these systems. For example, in astronomy, something as fundamental as gravity was not fully understood until Einstein predicted the bending of the space-time continuum by movement of bodies, like planets, through space. Nor could the pattern of organization of planets within galaxies be

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understood until the existence of black holes were recorded and theorized, as was the case for dark matter and gravity.1 In our view, the social universe is not so different than the biotic or physical universes. Sociologists need to search for the generic and fundamental forces driving the formation and change of the socio-cultural universe. Descriptions are useful and have made sociology a very insightful discipline over the last 200 years. However, sociology is at its best with it seeks to be, as Auguste Comte imperfectly understood and advocated, a true science with a name that we prefer to sociology— a science of social physics. Sociology is, as we noted, far along in being like physics, but the overspecialization and, sadly, the anti-science bias of many sociologists have blinded us against realizing just how far sociology has come. Scholars have been studying inter-societal systems for a long time, even at an implicitly theoretical level as is revealed by such diverse scholars as Thucydides and Khaldun. If more WSA scholars would commit themselves to such “generalizing efforts” that seek to understanding the dynamic relations among forces driving the social universe, we may be able to understand the evolution of inter-societal systems and how to better understand contemporary and future in geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural relations among societies. Indeed, over the last 50 years, sociology has come a long way along this road. And, if more scholars in WSA committed to scientific theorizing of the social universe, sociology and history as well would be able to make ever-more accurate predictions and aid in developing a more just and sustainable world.

1

Isaac Newton’s equations on gravity were not as accurate because he did not know the underlying mechanism by which gravity exerts its force, but they were close enough to be practical. There is no reason that theorizing about the forces driving inter-societal dynamics cannot be theorized in this way, with predictions become ever more accurate as all the forces in play become fully known and integrated into a theory.

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