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Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change
The grand historical and social theorizing of early in this century―works that conjure up names like Marx, Spengler, Toynbee, and Sorokin―has been out of favor for many years. Only recently have two new schools of research, comparative civilizational studies and world systems analysis, emerged to examine societies in the broadest possible terms. These two intellectual movements have run on parallel tracks, seldom engaging in each other's work―until now!
Sanderson invites the leading figures in these two groups―including Wallerstein, MacNeill, Frank, Wilkinson, Chase-Dunn, and Robertson―to compare and contrast their assumptions and conclusions about broad-scale social and historical change. A mixture of newly commissioned work and recently published articles, this book is unmatched as a useful introduction to current thinking about global historical change.
Sanderson invites the leading figures in these two groups―including Wallerstein, MacNeill, Frank, Wilkinson, Chase-Dunn, and Robertson―to compare and contrast their assumptions and conclusions about broad-scale social and historical change. A mixture of newly commissioned work and recently published articles, this book is unmatched as a useful introduction to current thinking about global historical change.
324 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 1995
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September 30, 2019
Tedious.
Book consists of a large number of papers by well-known (mostly) social scientists posing as historians -- that is, doing World-Systems theory - and indulging in large-scale abstract systems of classification. Most of these individuals (I reserve judgment on Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank...for now) appear second-rate. But that is likely because they have chosen a field and a method that is not real. One can 'classify' civilizations if, like Braudel, one uses a 'light-touch', and doesn't take one's taxonomies all that seriously. But once you've convinced yourself that you are doing something fundamental and original and *REAL* with all these classificatory schemes, you simply fall into a sterile scholasticism.
Well..., this is what happens when the accumulated knowledge of a civilization reaches a point where no one mortal can actually master it -- and bright individuals, therefore, either given themselves over to hyper-minutiae (the method I chose when I published) or to pretentious generalizations -- the approach that most in the Humanities nowadays choose.
The latter route leads to sophistry, the former to obscurity.
Book consists of a large number of papers by well-known (mostly) social scientists posing as historians -- that is, doing World-Systems theory - and indulging in large-scale abstract systems of classification. Most of these individuals (I reserve judgment on Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank...for now) appear second-rate. But that is likely because they have chosen a field and a method that is not real. One can 'classify' civilizations if, like Braudel, one uses a 'light-touch', and doesn't take one's taxonomies all that seriously. But once you've convinced yourself that you are doing something fundamental and original and *REAL* with all these classificatory schemes, you simply fall into a sterile scholasticism.
Well..., this is what happens when the accumulated knowledge of a civilization reaches a point where no one mortal can actually master it -- and bright individuals, therefore, either given themselves over to hyper-minutiae (the method I chose when I published) or to pretentious generalizations -- the approach that most in the Humanities nowadays choose.
The latter route leads to sophistry, the former to obscurity.
Displaying 1 of 1 review