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.

Table of Contents:

chapter 1 Introduction
chapter 2 I. CIVILIZATIONAL APPROACHES
chapter 3 S. Sanderson, Introduction
chapter 4 M. Melko, The Nature of Civilizations
chapter 5 D. Wilkinson, Central Civilization
chapter 6 W. Eckhardt, A Dialectical Evolutionary Theory of Civilizations, Empires, and Wars
chapter 7 II. WORLD SYSTEMS APPROACHES
chapter 8 S. Sanderson, T. Hall, Introduction
chapter 9 C. Chase-Dunn, T. Hall, Cross-World-System Comparisons
chapter 10 B. Gills, Capital and Power in the Processes of World History
chapter 11 A. G. Frank, The Modern World System Revisited
chapter 12 A. Bergesen, Let's be Frank about World History
chapter 13 A. Bosworth, World Cities and World Economic Cycles
chapter 14 III. CIVILIZATIONISTS AND WORLD-SYSTEM THEORISTS: DIALOGUE AND INTERPLAY
chapter 15 S. Sanderson, T. Hall, Introduction
chapter 16 I. Wallerstein, Hold the Tiller Firm
chapter 17 D. Wilkinson, Civilizations are World Systems!
chapter 18 S. Sanderson, Expanding World Commercialization
chapter 19 V. Roudometof, R. Robertson, Globalization, World-System Theory and the Comparative Study of Civilizations
chapter 20 IV. EPILOGUE
chapter 21 S. Sanderson, Introduction
chapter 22 W. McNeill, The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years
chapter 23 Index