ancient cities

world economy comprised of core, semiperiphery,
and periphery zones integrated by market exchanges.
Core regions specialize in capital-intensive production
and periphery regions in labor-intensive production.
Semiperiphery regions are an intermediate
zone between the core and periphery in terms of
capital intensity, labor skills, and wage levels.
Whether production is capital-intensive or labor-
intensive is relative, and the definitions change over
historical periods of time. For example, textile
manufacturing was a corelike, capital-intensive process
by the eighteenth century, a semiperipheral
process by the early twentieth century, and has
become a labor-intensive peripheral process by the
early twenty-first century.
The central relation of world systems is that
between core and periphery, and the key hierarchical
determinant of structural inequality is the
extraction of agrarian and other resources in
unequal exchange for manufactured goods.
Semiperiphery regions trade with both core and
periphery, exporting raw materials to the core and
simple manufactures to the periphery. The formulation
of the three zones is dynamic, and the model
allows for movement into and out of each zone. In
the twentieth century, the United States and Western
Europe are examples of core regions; West Africa
has been a peripheral region; and postindependent
Latin America, Korea, China, and India are examples
of semiperipheral regions. A number of countries
have moved upward over the second half of
the twentieth century, such as Japan in the 1960s,
the four East Asian tigers (Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Singapore, and South Korea) in the 1980s, and
China and India after the 1990s.
The Critiques
Major critiques of Wallerstein’s work target his
periodization of modern history and his overemphasis
on external factors and economic relations
for explaining social change. For world-systems
studies as a whole, two major critiques can be
summarized: the first is regarding the WSP’s articulation
of agrarian extraction as the key hierarchical
determinant of structural inequality, and the
second is regarding its formulation of core, semiperiphery,
and periphery relations, which is inadequate
to explain uneven development and internal
variations within countries and regions.
World-Systems Perspective
971
For the periodization of modern history,
Wallerstein sees the sixteenth century as the transition
to capitalism, and he argues that agricultural
capitalism is as critical as industrial capitalism.
But some historians trace the origin of capitalism
to long-distance trades in premodern times or to
innovative commercial practices in the medieval
period, and they do not see the sixteenth century
as a breaking point in the development of capitalism.
In regard to his relational thinking, some
argue that Wallerstein has focused only on external
relations between countries and has neglected
internal relations and structures within countries
when explaining social change. From the Marxist
perspective, some notice the lack of attention to
class struggles from below in Wallerstein’s work,
whereas others, often from a Weberian perspective,
criticize his overemphasis on economic relations
and disregard of cultural explanations for
social change under capitalism.
The WSP articulates core and periphery relations
as structurally determined by agrarian extraction,
that is, the unequal exchange with raw
materials from periphery countries for manufactured
goods produced in core countries. However,
this articulation does not capture the new conditions
of the world economy after the 1970s, such as
the global expansion of manufacturing, the new
flexible international division of labor, the rise of
service industries, and the recentralization of command
functions in global cities in core countries. It
is clear that agrarian extraction is no longer the key
hierarchical determinant defining core and periphery
relations in the global economy of the twentyfirst
century.
The focus on the national scale in the WSP has
made the field inadequate for explaining internal
variations within countries, such as uneven development
among industries, regions, and cities in a
particular country, as well as fragmentation
along racial and gender dimensions. For example,
the three-zone articulation of core, semiperiphery,
and periphery can’t explain why the
semiconductor industry in Korea is leading the
world while other industries in the country lag
behind; it cannot capture regional disparity
between west and east, rural and urban China;
and it cannot articulate the structural inequality
between top-tier global cities and the vast majority
of ordinary cities.