Modern World System Definition

The European world economy of the sixteenth century as a whole tended to be a one-class system. It was the dynamic forces that benefited from economic expansion and the capitalist system, especially in the central areas, that tended to be class-conscious, that is, operating in the political arena as a group defined above all by their common role in the economy. This common role has indeed been defined quite broadly in the perspective of the twentieth century. These included farmers, merchants and industrialists. In all cases, individual entrepreneurs often alternated between these activities or combined them. The crucial difference was between these men, regardless of their profession, who were mainly focused on profit in the global market, and the others, who were not so oriented. The existence of the state has had a great influence on the formation of political, capitalist and social groups. It is the state that controls all the activities of a global economy. However, no state machine is strong enough to control all systems, and the capitalist class had no system to protect it from the gains and losses that would emanate from the whole system. State apparatuses are strong in some areas and weak in others (Wallerstein, p. 395).

IvyPanda. (December 3, 2019). Properties of systems of the modern world. ivypanda.com/essays/modern-world-system/ 23I equate the dynamic cities of Jacobs (where new jobs are created, new productions replace imports, creating a more complex urban economy) with the global cities of Saskia Sassen (where huge amounts of new work have been created in professional and financial services, referred to in the literature as advanced production services). Since the latter work is global, I focus on cities as networks and network building actors – professional and financial services firms with their global office networks (the leading contemporary creators of new urban works). Therefore, I treat globalization as structured by contemporary dynamic cities (global service centers) that form a network of cosmopolitan cities. We have defined a world system as a system in which there is a global division of labor. This division is not only functional – that is, professional – but geographical. That is, the range of economic tasks is not evenly distributed in the global system. This is partly the result of ecological considerations, of course. But for the most part, it is a function of the social organization of labor that increases and legitimizes the ability of certain groups within the system to exploit the labor of others, that is, to receive a larger share of the surplus.

22My admiration for Jacobs comes from his 1984 prediction of the economic decline of Japanese cities because they carry the burden of the Japanese state (rural political parties that waste the wealth generated by cities). No one else saw the end of Japan`s “economic miracle” while it was still in full swing. In the 1990s, when she was right, I began a personal re-evaluation of her work on cities, culminating in my research on the Global Network of Cities. Their basic argument is that cities (not states) are the basic units of economic life, and that it is made alive and dynamic by economic interactions within and between cities. Thus, economic growth is equated with dynamic cities, not with the development of the state. “. In English, the hyphen is essential to indicate these concepts. “World system” without a hyphen suggests that there has been only one world system in the history of the world. [3] Therefore, capitalists are free to maneuver economic systems to their advantage.

This system distributes rewards unevenly to all members of society because a few people manage to reap the economic benefits. The decision-making process is the best mechanism that can be used to change the model in which rewards are distributed in an economic system. The establishment of many social groups in a global system creates conflicts and several groups arise to resolve these conflicts. Despite the fact that different social groups are formed, these groups are absorbed later and the number automatically decreases. However, in some systems there may be no social group, while in others there may be more than two (Wallerstein, p. 394). Consequently, the ongoing process of a world economy tends to widen the economic and social differences between its different sectors in the process of its development. One factor that obscures this fact is that the process of developing a world economy brings technological advances that make it possible to expand the boundaries of a world economy. In this case, some regions of the world may change their structural role in the global economy to their advantage, although, at the same time, reward inequality between different sectors of the global economy as a whole may increase. In order to clearly observe this crucial phenomenon, we have emphasized the distinction between a marginal area of a particular world economy and the external arena of the world economy. The outer arena of one century often becomes the periphery of the next – or its semi-periphery. But even then, nuclear states can become semi-peripheral and semi-peripheral states can become peripheral.

Conflicts in a global system exist when there is more than one social class because conflicts involve two or more groups. Conflict occurs when a class of individuals identifies as universal and tends to dominate other groups in the system. 3Global systems analysis is an approach to understanding social change based on geohistorical systems. These provide a spatio-temporal framework for understanding social change, replacing the orthodox use of the nation-state as the fundamental unit of change (i.e. space as “home” and time as the “ascension of the nation”). Geohistorical systems refer to specific structures of social relations that are concretely realized through time (trends and cycles) and space (expansion and order). The modern world system is a capitalist world economy, which is the geohistorical system in which we live. The basic geohistory is that it was built in Europe in the “long” 16th century, spread worldwide around 1900 (i.e. destroyed all other systems) and will perish in the 21st century. The development of state apparatuses reflected precisely this uncertainty. Strong states serve the interests of some groups and harm those of others. From the point of view of the world system as a whole, if there is to be a plurality of political entities (i.e.

if the system is not a world empire), then it cannot be true that all these units are equally strong. Because if they were, they would be able to block the effective functioning of transnational economic entities located in another state. And obviously, some combinations of these groups control the state. The result would be that the global division of labour would be hampered, the world economy would sink and the world system would eventually collapse. Basic references to the analysis of global systems come from Immanuel Wallerstein: Wallerstein I. (1979), The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. In the “second world” by the incorporation of the USSR and its sphere of influence with the end of the Cold War; In a global economy, there is a division of labor that is set to achieve a higher level of capitalization. Capital invested in a global economy must be rewarded to ensure a fair distribution of resources.