Ethnicity and World-Systems Analysis 61considered the Irish a separate race illustrates how cultural differences can be construed
as biological. Frontiers are also where peoples mix, interbreed, and intermarry, giving
rise to myriad processes of ethnic change and ethnogenesis. While some scholars have
treated such changes as local, it is clear that world-systemic processes—incorporation,
expansion, frontier and state formation—play a considerable role, albeit not always the
dominant one.
Kardulias developed a concept of “negotiated peripherality”:
...the willingness and ability of individuals in peripheries to determine the conditions under
which they will engage in trade, ceremonial exchange, intermarriage, adoption of outside
religions and political ideologies, etc. with representatives of expanding states (Kardulias
2007: 55).That is, people in peripheral areas can at times selectively adopt or reject a variety of
symbols, artifacts, foodstuffs, and behaviors. Such negotiations have both short-term
and long-term goals. Many short-term consequences of a choice may be judged with
some degree of certainty. However, unintended or unforeseen long-term consequences
are far from clear. Even a decision that brings immediate benefits may in the long run
prove costly to a group on the periphery. For example, many Native American groups
initially benefited from the European objects gained through the fur trade. Yet, over a
longer period, they became dependent on the new technologies over which they had little
control. Adoption of metal artifacts, firearms, and other goods typically reduce autonomy
and the ability to continue to negotiate terms of incorporation. Finally, negotiation can
be conducted at the individual or corporate level. In the former, each person might be
responsible for determining the acceptability of a transaction; in the latter, someone (or
a restricted group) acts as the spokesperson for those on one side or the other (and
occasionally both sides) of a negotiation. Both approaches can lead to changes in ethnic
identity, albeit in very different ways.
One creative way to employ WSA is as a corrective to potentially misleading historical
records (Greaves 2007b: 19). InWar in the Tribal Zone, Ferguson and Whitehead (1992)
argue that such distortions are typical consequences of state or world-system expansion
and incorporation. The “tribal zone” is a transition zone just beyond the boundary of
state expansion into non-state territories. When states (or world-systems) expand, they
either absorb or displace non-state peoples. In either case, the contact ripples out far
beyond the region of direct contact. This is fueled by trade and efforts of indigenous
leaders to use access to state goods as a way to garner followers. Those further away often
try to bypass the middlemen and thus come into conflict with those closer to the state
boundary. In the modern world-system, war could be generated by the slave trade (see
Hall 1989 for a detailed account), but the consequences are varied: the spread of diseases,
and new technologies too, such as the spread of horses from northeastern New Spain or
guns from northeastern North America. The contributors toWar in the Tribal Zoneshow
that these developments occurred in both ancient and modern times, and accompany the
expansion of any state, an important correction to the common assumption that it is only
capitalism that does this.
WSA forces scholars to address scalar context, which can be either geographical
or chronological. Some changes originate far from the frontier; others are extremely