A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean

Ethnicity and World-Systems Analysis 55

For Chase-Dunn and Hall, world-systems typically have four sets of boundaries, marked
by sharp fall-offs in density of exchanges of:

• Low value to weight goods, labeled bulk goods network (BGN)


• Regularized military or political interactions, labeled political–military network
  (PMN)


• More or less regular exchanges of high value to weight goods, labeled prestige or
  luxury goods network (PGN)


• Information on all kinds of, including cultural and ideological, labeled information
  network (IN).

The sharp lines in Figure 4.2 may give a false sense of precision. Rather, they should be
imagined as a contour map where the isoclines of the density of exchanges are bunched
together (Smith 2005). Such sharp fall-offs would be the “boundary” of a network. They
are frontiers internal to a world-system (Hall 2009).
Change may also occur because of a contested periphery, a region with certain key
resources or a strategic location that lies between major states and is a prize over which
they contend (Allen 2005). Peripheral areas, especially when contested, can be key areas
for economic, political, social, and religious competition and exchange. This is an issue
where historians of ancient times could shed a great deal of light. Conversely, the concept,
and the underlying relations of a contested periphery could help make sense of a region
that remains nearly autonomous from surrounding states or world-systems (Hornborg
and Hill 2011 and Killebrew 2005).

Bulk

Goods

Net

Prestige

Goods

Net

Political/Military Net

Information

Net

Figure 4.2 Schematic of world-system boundaries (from Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 54).
Reprinted by permission of Westview Press.