PEWS News Newsletter of the Section on the Political Economy of the World-System, American Sociological Association Winter 1995 _________________________________________________________________ __________ Section Officers CHAIR: Frederic Deyo (95) SUNY-Brockport CHAIR-ELECT: Philip McMichael (96) Cornell University SECRETARY-TREASURER: Dale W. Wimberley (97) Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University COUNCIL: Kathie Friedman-Kasaba (97) University of Washington-Tacoma Roberto Korzeniewicz (97) University of Maryland Edna Bonacich (96) University of California-Riverside David Smith (96) University of California-Irvine Diane Davis (95) New School for Social Research Shelley Feldman (95) Cornell University _________________________________________________________________ _________ Send PEWS NEWS copy to Dale W. Wimberley, Editor, Department of Sociology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0137 USA. E-mail: Dale.Wimberley@vt.edu Fax: (703) 231-3860. Copy deadlines: Fall, September 1; Winter, December 1; Spring, March 1; Summer, June 1. PEWS NEWS is also available on the Internet after distribution of paper copies. Gopher to: csf.colorado.edu and select World Systems, newsletters, pews_news. _________________________________________________________________ __________ In this Issue: Message from the Chair: A Note on Numbers and Names 1995 Distinguished Scholarship Award: Nominations Needed by March 31! Sessions for 1995 Annual Meeting, Washington Whither PEWS? A Dialogue, Part I Shelley Feldman Albert Bergesen Correction Conference: Interpreting Historical Change at the End of the Twentieth Century Preliminary Program: PEWS XIX Conference, Latin America in the World-Economy _________________________________________________________________ __________ MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR: A NOTE ON NUMBERS AND NAMES FRED DEYO Our failure this year to reach the 400 section membership threshold has resulted in the elimination of one of our panel slots in the upcoming ASA annual meetings in Washington D.C. This has in turn led to the cancellation of an exciting panel proposed by Al Bergesen on Environment and the World System. The larger issue of section membership has been raised in recent issues of PEWS NEWS. Let me continue this tradition with a few further observations. Our membership performance has not in fact been a bad one. Despite the addition of at least 16 new sections since 1982 (with a resultant increase in section competition for bodies), PEWS continued a fairly steady growth until 1992. Indeed, over the past 10 years, our section count has risen by 55 percent, as against only a 16 percent increase in overall ASA membership. But having said this, our modest membership decline during the last two years (from 417 to 382) has now significantly compromised our section programming at the annual meeting. The decline may in part be a spin-off from the global "discrediting" of Neo-Marxist politics and social analysis (the Marxist Section has experienced a similar recent decline). Or, as has been suggested by some, the decline may reflect our ineffectiveness in communicating to the larger ASA membership our openness to perspectives and types of analysis which fall outside the purview of World-Systems Analysis, narrowly defined. In particular, a number of people have noted some sense of isolation among PEWS members who pursue non-WS development approaches and women-and- development issues. Since it is probably the case that the majority of PEWS members do development-related work, we might do well to make clearer, both internally and in our communications to the larger ASA membership, our commitment to support and include this larger group of scholars in section activities. Enhanced inclusivity might be accomplished in any of several ways. One controversial and possibly divisive approach would be to rename our section (e.g., The Political Economy of Global Social Change [PEGSOC], Global Political Economy [GLOPE], or some such). Such a change to a more generic title would perhaps most directly and effectively signal our continued willingness to accommodate an increasingly diversified section membership. Another less difficult course would be to keep our name but communicate more forcefully our openness to alternate perspectives (just how "open" is a matter to be considered). This communication could be achieved through continued/increased involvement in cross-sectional programs/panels, efforts to attract more none-PEWS people to our annual party (perhaps by co- sponsoring this party with other sections...like Asia/Asia America, Latino/a Sociology, Comparative and Historical, Marxist,etc), rephrasing our self-description in the ASA recruitment form sent to graduate students regarding section membership, and greater effort to publicize our section activities on Section Night at the annual meetings (this year scheduled for Saturday, August 19). Notable, in this regard, are Chris Chase-Dunn's heroic efforts in expanding participation in the new world-systems electronic conferencing network. Pursuant to Phil McMichael's earlier suggestion, and pending PEWS Council approval, I will be appointing an ad-hoc committee to explore these and other issues with a view to making recommendations for consideration at our August Council and business meetings in Washington, D.C. In addition, I invite comments and suggestions from PEWS members to be sent to Dale Wimberley for possible inclusion in PEWS NEWS and for forwarding to the membership committee. For now, Happy New Year. I hope to see you in Washington. 1995 DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD: NOMINATIONS NEEDED BY MARCH 31! Nominations are solicited for the annual PEWS Award for Distinguished Scholarship to be presented at the 1995 ASA meeting. In accordance with ASA guidelines, the official title of the award is The American Sociological Association Section on the Political Economy of the World System Award for Distinguished Scholarship. The award is for a book, article, or series of articles by an author published in the three calendar years preceding the year in which the award is made. Works published in calendar years 1992, 1993, 1994 are eligible for the 1995 award. Any work of comparative or international sociology concerned with the relationship between domestic and global social, economic and political processes is eligible. Any work may be nominated by anyone regardless of the disciplinary, section or ASA affiliation of either author or nominator. Self nominations are welcome. Nominations for the 1995 award must be received by the award committee by MARCH 31, 1995. Letters of nomination should include complete publication information. Nominations should be submitted to Award Committee Chair Philip McMichael, Department of Rural Sociology, 133 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7801. SESSIONS FOR 1995 ANNUAL MEETING, WASHINGTON As Fred Deyo noted above, the drop in PEWS membership below the 400- member threshold resulted in the loss of our session on Environment and the World System. The other 1995 PEWS sessions remain as they were announced in ASA's Call for Papers for the annual meeting, mailed to all members in the fall (Submissions were due to the organizers January 14): (1) SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, WORK ORGANIZATION, AND GLOBAL RESTRUCTURING, organized by David Smith and Peter Taylor; (2) GLOBAL PRAXIS AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD SYSTEM, organized by Christopher Chase-Dunn and Terry Boswell; (3) ROUNDTABLE SESSION, organized by Laura Raynolds and Jayati Lal. WHITHER PEWS? A DIALOGUE, PART I The next few issues of PEWS NEWS will include PEWS officers' and other members' responses to the question, "Whither PEWS?" _ that is, what is the purpose and future of this section, and what actions are needed to achieve our goals? Chair Fred Deyo has launched this discussion with his statement in this issue. Below, Council member Shelley Feldman and long-time PEWS member Al Bergesen give their views. As a PEWS member, you are invited to send in YOUR statements on this issue. Please make your statement no longer than 500 words (shorter statements and e-mailed statements would be especially appreciated). Statements may be edited for clarity and brevity. We will print as many of these as our page constraints permit. The statements included in the current issue indicate that we should have a lively and productive discussion over the next few months. PEWS NEWS seeks to represent the full range of PEWS members' views in this series. Feel free to join in! SHELLEY FELDMAN: I first joined the PEWS Section in the mid-1980s after a return from almost a decade abroad. As an newcomer, PEWS seemed to be among the few ASA sections to think beyond national borders and to engage with global, comparative and historical modes of analysis. I have been struck, however, by the fact that even though a critique of mainstream social science is implicit in numerous papers presented at our meetings, there seem to be inadequate attention given to the Eurocentric and North American biases framing many of our contributions. Additionally, our understanding of "the south" appears constrained by unexamined assumptions about hegemony and about processes of change and challenge. This seems to lead to a form of determinism that belies the initiatives made by those within the section who employ increasingly nuanced theorizations of globalization to interpret the organization of new trade regimes, regional blocs including NAFTA and GATT, the reorganization of production and labor, and nationalist projects as these processes reshape the global political and economic landscape. As a section we have also given insufficient attention to discussions of the epistemological and methodological issues framing contemporary theory even though the past decade has witnessed the development of post- modernism and post- structuralism as major intellectual challenges. Striking in its underrepresentation, for instance, are feminist contributions to social analyses within PEWS which often draw on post- modernist and post-structuralist insights and challenge accepted notions of facticity, dualism and ahistoricity as well as contribute to rethinking notions of constructionism, even of world systemic processes. Most of these debates continue to ensue outside of sociology and PEWS and we have yet to discuss how they may help to reconstitute our identity and the breadth of our focus. At this juncture, as we think about a direction for our future, it seems appropriate to promote the range of expertise and theoretical and empirical insight among our members for understanding and interpreting these intellectual and political-economic movements. Benefitting from the world systems framework in its theoretical sweep and its empirical foci, yet encouraging analyses which do not employ the world system as a transhistorical truth, the Section could take the lead in welcoming debate that begins from an appreciation of our "intellectual origins" but asks questions which explore propositions and contests theoretical assumptions previously taken for granted. This would move us beyond a concern with "diluting" the grant historical narrative. It would also recognize how constructionism could help situate the specificity of world systems theory and appreciate the theoretical contributions of the approach without allowing the insights we have gained to ossify and outlive their usefulness. Embracing a more eclectic vision of the global may lead to undermining the coherence that the section at one time may have desired and enjoyed. But, inviting work that addresses processes of global change may open up rather than stifle conversation, and may help to reframe how we think about and do political economy. It may also enable us to take the lead in how the field itself is reconstituted epistemically, methodologically and substantively. Given the moribund character of much of sociology, I think we have the potential to embrace and further debate the meanings and articulations of processes and patterns of global reorganization and to accommodate the rich intellectual contributions that would invite a conversation to unfold. Such initiatives will do well both to expand our membership and to position ourselves more centrally in the theoretical initiatives and substantive concerns that already characterize our contribution to sociology and development studies. ALBERT BERGESEN _ THE STAGES OF PEWS: PEWS is becoming irrelevant. Our numbers are down. We lost a session this year, and our flagship presentation at the 1995 ASAs focuses upon a minor utopian novel about a "world party" in the 21st century. To put it bluntly: in a world-system of pressing problems from environmental degradation to growing violence between races/ethnicities, the use of a session on fantasy politics and indulgent futurology is a grossly irresponsible use of half of the sessions we are allocated. How have we gotten to this situation where utopian speculation about forming a 21st century "world party" is considered putting our best foot forward as research scientists? I don't know, but on reflection I can see three stages in our decline as a research section. In Stage One we started with our feet rooted in the reality of underdevelopment, poverty, oppression, and the human suffering of the Third World. We began studying, researching, and theorizing underdevelopment. It brought us our greatest success, the overthrow of modernization theory as the story of development. But this concern for the South waned in the 1980s, and in response to our evaporating subject matter we entered Stage Two _ outreach _ where we nominated scholars from other areas to be PEWS Chair with the hope that they would bring in new people and subject matter. We began to drift from the world as it existed today, and took up more esoteric subjects from pre- history to hunter-gatherer "world-systems" and even art history. Our subject matter became ever more arcane and, as a consequence, of interest to ever fewer and fewer people. On their own these are important issues, yes, but clearly we are adrift, and we have lost our moral compass of concern for the problems of our world. At this point we now enter Stage Three, our fantasy stage of non-reality concerns and utopian political fantasies. This is the 1995 ASA session organized around Wagar's fantasy novel presented to the larger ASA as one of our now only two sessions. I do not know the answer, but I strongly feel we must return to the real world of existing problems and pains of the world as we know it. We need not be irrelevant. What the other sections study is amenable to world-system analysis: the Organizations section deals with the global environment, and the Culture section is thriving because culture is global. >From job losses producing underclasses as the result of global restructuring, to the immigrant backlash of Proposition 187, today's biting issues are clearly world-system issues. This is not to say we should ignore our new arcane topics, nor should we abandon studying the underdeveloped South either, but it is clear that we have lost the way that was once lit by the plight of the South. New lights need to be lit; new areas of research for which the world-system is a good explanation need to be identified. Otherwise the drift into fantasy topics and indulgent utopian visions of political power will only increase. Let's return to our original vision. Let's make next year's sessions about the real world. CORRECTION New PEWS Council member Kathie Friedman-Kasaba, of the University of Washington-Tacoma, was erroneously listed in the Fall issue of PEWS NEWS as Kathie Kasaba Friedman, University of Washington. CONFERENCE: INTERPRETING HISTORICAL CHANGE AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the journal THEORY AND SOCEITY, the Center for Comparative Research in History, Society, and Culture at the University of California-Davis will present a conference February 24-26, 1995, on "Interpreting Historical Change at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Challenges of the Present Age to Historical Thought and Social Theory." Thirty-three sociologists and historians from eighteen universities will participate. Among the presenters are Charles Tilly and Anthony Giddens; Dale Tomich and John Walton are two of the commentators. For information, contact William W. Hagen, Director of the Center, at (916) 752-8707, or by fax at (916) 752-9060. PRELIMINARY PROGRAM Political Economy of the World-System XIX Annual Conference: Latin America in the World-Economy PEWS XIX will be held April 20-22, 1995, at the North-South Center of the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. Those interested in attending this conference will be able to register on site. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Alejandro Portes, Johns Hopkins University LATIN AMERICA IN THE WORLD-ECONOMY: o Ayluardo, Clara Garcia, Veronica M. Kann, Suzanne Wilson, and William G. Martin, "The Impossible Marriage of A World-Historical Perspective and 'Latin American' Studies." o Bunker, Stephen G. and Paul S. Ciccantell, "A Rising Hegemon Creates its Periphery: Latin American Raw Materials and Japan." o Roberts, J. Timmons, "Globalization and the Environment in Latin America: Loans, Investments, NGOs and Treaties." o Vacs, Aldo, "The Last Train to Manchester: The Rise of Market Economies, Procedural Democracy and Personalistic Politics in Latin America." COMMODITY CHAINS: o Addis, Caren, "SEBRAE Sidelines Trade Associations: Shifting Governance in Small Firm Restructuring in Brazil." o Bellone, Amy E., "The Cocaine Commodity Chain and Development Paths in Peru and Bolivia." o Spener, David, "Small Firms, Commodity Chains, and free Trade: The Transformation of the Texas-Mexico Border Region." o Talbot, John M., "Struggles for Control of the Commodity Chain: The Instant Coffee Exports of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Cote d'Ivoire, and India." ENTREPRISES AND LABOR MARKETS: o Diaz, Alvaro, title to be announced o Itzigsohn, Jos, "The State and the Articulations of the Informal Economy." o Korzeniewicz, Miguel, "Uncertainty and Innovation: Emerging Agendas in the Political Economy of Latin America." o Tardanico, Richard, "Global Restructuring and Urban Unemployment in Latin America." MIGRATION PROCESSES: o Chinchilla, Norma S. and Nora Hamilton, "Economic Liberalization, Democratization and Migration: Some Indications Based on the Mexican and Central American Experience." o Jonas, Susanne, "Can State Policies Reverse Transnational Realities? A Case Study of Central American Immigrants/Refugees and State Policies in Mexico and the United States." o Kyle, David, "Historical Logics, Structural Determinants, and Ethnic Identities: The Social Construction of International Mobility From the Ecuadorean Andes." o Matthei, Linda M. and David A. Smith, "Women, Households, and Transnational Migration Networks: Global Economic Restructuring and a Central American Community." STATES AND POLITICS: o Sergio Berensztein, "Rebuilding State Capacity in Latin America: The Politics of Taxation." o Cavarozzi, Marcelo, "Parties and Party Systems in Contemporary South America: A Historical Approach." o Kincaid, A. Douglas and Eduardo Gamarra, " Disorderly Democracy: Redefining Public Security in Latin America." SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: o Forsythe, Nancy, "Old and New Anti-Systemic Movements: Accumulation, Rule and Resistance in Latin America.". o McCaughan, Edward and W.L. Goldfrank, "The Demise and Rise of the Latin American Left: Castaneda and Beyond." o Podobnik, Bruce M., "Revolutionary Terrorism in the Periphery: A Comparative Analysis." For more information about the conference or local accomodations, please contact Roberto P. Korzeniewicz, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, Fax: (301) 314-6892, E-Mail: rk81@umail.umd.edu; or Professor William C. Smith, Graduate School of International Studies, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, Fax: (305) 284-2863, E-Mail bsmith@umiami.ir.miami.edu. Dale W. Wimberley Department of Sociology Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University