The Dictionary of Human Geography

necessarily by politicalborders. Hence, three
types of society are identified:mini-systemsare
small tribal entities following the reciprocal-
lineage mode; world-empires, such as the
Roman empire orfeudalEurope, practice
the redistributive-tributary mode; andworld-
economiesare capitalist. In the broad historical
purview of world systems, the contemporary
capitalist world economy emerged ineurope
in the fifteenth century and has since diffused
to encompass the whole globe and eliminate all
other forms of society. Thus, the modern world
system is a single society, the global capitalist
world-economy. Scholars have used world-
systems analysis to study all types of society,
but geographers have concentrated upon the
modern world-system (Flint and Shelley, 1996).
The geographical expression of political
borders and the spatial extent of society were
matched in mini-systems and world-empires.
However, in the capitalist world-economy
the mode of production is defined by a global
market, while the system is divided into separ-
atestates. It is here that Wallerstein’s chal-
lenge to mainstream social science lies. He
claims that social scientists equate states with
society, and therefore have only a limited view
of social change if they restrict analysis of
cause and effect to one country. The result is
the error of developmentalism (Taylor, 1989),
practiced within both liberal and Marxist
social science, arguing that countries move
through particular stages of development; for
example, individual countries were identified
as ‘progressing’ through stages of population
dynamics following thedemographic transi-
tionmodel. Alternatively, social change occurs
at the scale of the system, and changes within
states occur within the broader context. Such
thinkingled tocritique of world-systemsanalysis
asdenying theagency of states and other groups.
Geographers have attempted to address this
critique through an application of geograph-
ical scale(Taylor, 1981). Taylor identified
three key political scales; thelocality, the
nation-stateand the global. Ultimately, pro-
cesses of social change can be traced to the
global scale, but individual agency occurs at
the local scale within the political and social
limits set by states, themselves restricted by
the imperatives of the global scale. Such an
approach has been critiqued as structurally
deterministic, but others have shown how pol-
itical agency is limited within the constraints
of the modern world-system (Flint, 2001).
Initially, geographers complemented their
application of geographical scale with a focus
upon a key feature of the modern world-

system, thecore–peripheryhierarchy. The

capitalist world-economy is necessarily unequal,

comprised of peripheral processes (low-income

and low-profit production) and core processes

(high-income and high-profit). These pro-

cesses cluster geographically, so that core

processes may dominate (but not exclusively)

in some states, and vice versa. In the UK, for

example, core processes predominate, but

some expression of peripheral processes is

also evident in inner-city sweatshops. In addi-

tion, some states andregionsare identified as

semi-peripheral – with a relatively even

balance of core and periphery processes.

Core and peripheral processes were used to

map broad global geographies of equality

(Flint and Shelley, 1996).

Recent analysis by political geographers has

focused upon two concepts;hegemonyand

world cities. A hegemonic power is the one

dominant state in the modern world-system.

Its power rests upon economic strength, but is

also expressed in the dissemination ofculture

(Taylor, 1999). The ‘war on terror’ has been

identified as thegeopoliticalresponse of the

USA, the current hegemonic power, in the face

of violent challenge (Flint and Falah, 2004: see

terrorism;war). World cities have been iden-

tified as the key nodes on a new geographical

expression of power in the modern world-sys-

tem, anetworkof economic and cultural rela-

tions that facilitates capital accumulation

(Knox and Taylor, 1995). Mapping the goods

andservicesproducedwithin particular cities

and their interconnectivity results in a hier-

archy of cities, and informs geographies ofsov-

ereigntyandglobalization.

World-systems analysis challenged liberal

and Marxist approaches to social science,

and has been critiqued by both – by one for

being too structural and Marxist and by the

other by not being these things enough!

Wallerstein (1991b) has also challenged the

way in which social science is organized into

separate disciplines. Instead, world-systems

analysis is a unidisciplinary approach, encom-

passing economic, political, social, and cul-

tural processes to show how culture and

politics are inseparable from economics.

Although world-systems analysis was at the

forefront of the revitalized political geography,

it is no longer dominant, however, and instead

is now one of many theories informing the

sub-discipline. cf

Suggested reading

Hall (2000c); Taylor and Flint (1999); Wallerstein

(2004).

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WORLD-SYSTEMS ANALYSIS