World-Systems Theory: Toward a Heuristic and Pedagogic Conceptual Tool

While its proponents generally agree that a world-system exists, with properties and dynamics that in the modern world function at a global scale, there is still a lack of consensus as to what those properties and dynamics are and as to what they mean in terms of an understanding of the past and an approach to the future. In this paper I seek to clarify some of the ambiguities in the definitions of world-system concepts, particularly those surrounding the core-periphery typology of structure. I then suggest a larger frame of reference for world-systems theory derived from theoretical concepts in complex systems theory and augmenting Marxist conceptions of economic structure with the four-capital model from ecological economics. I present a model for the structure of the modern world-system that clarifies and builds on the core-periphery structural definitions, along with an economic model by which “coreness” and “peripheryness” may be operationalized according to four sets of measures. Finally, I introduce a theory of the dynamic processes sustaining and effecting changes in this structure.