Glenda B. Claborne
Soc 500b
April 5, 1999
Frank, A. G. (1998). ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bergesen, A. (1995). "Let's Be Frank About World History." In S. Sanderson (ed.), Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change (pp. 195-205). Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.
Beyond Wholes and Parts
Frank (1998) goes beyond a frothy critique of and a guilt-ridden sensibility about Eurocentrism and gives us a carefully mapped-out case for a more global perspective on world economic history. His detailed account of the global trade along caravan, maritime and riverine trade routes that crisscrossed and encircled the globe from 1500 to 1800 leaves no doubt about the glaring bias of Eurocentrism. Furthermore, the evidence for an Asian-centered global economy during that period challenges our tendencies (a) to take received knowledge as self-evident; (b) to view the world through our narrow lenses; (c) to attribute causality to factors that elevate categories to which we belong; (d) to fuss about globalization as if it is a very recent phenomenon; and (e) to conceive of history as necessarily and progressively unilinear.
Beyond unmasking errors and gaining sensibilities, however, still stands the necessity of "new theory, new conceptualization to go with, to appropriately fit the new reality of this world historical systematicity" (Bergesen, 1995). Frank has uncovered some micro- and macro-economic factors about the rise of the West and the decline of the East giving us some ideas for a theoretical logic operating at a world systemic level; the role of currency, the relationship between demand and supply and its effects on production and exploitation of both human and natural resources. More importantly, these factors operated within a single global economic network in which the positions of economic regions relative to each other determined the ebb, rise and flow of economic activity worldwide. Asia was its center, Europe was in the periphery. Europe gained dominance only because it was able to control the silver currency which determined the terms of trade and production and which was backed by nothing more than Europe's massive exploitation of silver mines in the Americas. Europe got hold of the lifeblood of the world economy and it did not even have to squeeze it out of its own human and natural resources.
That the Europeans were able to effectively integrate diverse economic activities by instituting the silver as the common and dominant currency of trade and production, a managerial ability that Frank himself notes that nobody had ever done before, suggests that a peripheral position in a structure induces people in that position to take a broader look at the system they are in and thus acquire a conceptual framework for further abstraction. And abstraction cannot be taken lightly especially when one considers the superior position that the West has put itself in over the rest just through the power of ideas and knowledge. The Chinese and other Asians may have originally thought of and used currency and printing but it was the Europeans, with their acquired broader conception of the world, that have used these technologies for greater abstractions about how the world works. Then and now, perhaps the greatest injustice and inequality of all is that some countries happen to have control of the world of ideas and knowledge which they then use to control and exploit the human and natural resources of countries who are trapped in their level of rationality that, for some reasons, remains tied to the concrete bases of living and existence. The West's control of the world of abstract ideas and knowledge enabled it also to create credible myths about its superiority over the rest and effectively used this superiority to sell popular symbols (e.g. American fast-food franchises) and patented technological ideas to poor countries who, then and now, continue to provide cheap labor and raw materials for the production of consumer goods.
Considering the above, we might want to consider the relationship between the world's systemic structure and human cognition and behavior. It is not that I disregard the definitive and determinative properties of broader structures nor do I believe in the auto-generative capacities of individual units. I just think that we can go beyond the chicken-or-egg, whole-or-parts, collectivity-or-individual debates about the starting point of analyses for systems involving diverse and various elements. Frank suggests starting from the whole inwards, an approach similar to Pinker's "reverse engineering" of the whole. But this requires an idealization of the whole which is probably an easier task to do with mental modules like the language instinct than with systems that encompasses the whole world and all the interacting elements in it.
To idealize the unity of the world system, we might consider Frank's proposal of an analysis of the world system according to a three-legged tool: (a) ecological/economic/technological; (b) political/military power; and (c) social/cultural/ideological. Frank concedes that he has emphasized the economic and notes that the ecological is much neglected. He suggests that further analysis of the world system should consider the other "legs" of the analytical tool. I see the three-legged analytical tool as roughly corresponding to what might be the ideal conception of man in his relation to himself, to others, to the environment, and to the spiritual entities he answers to. I think therefore that perhaps we can idealize the unity of the world system in terms of an idealization of what man is. This is not to put the human species at the center of control of the universe, but to recognize that as long as a human being is doing the conceptualizing of the whole, the point of reference for the unity of the whole can only be what man is in relation to all other elements of the whole.
For the world systemic entity or for any broader entity involving humans and nature as parts, I will argue that we must look for the whole in the nature of its most fundamental parts. This is not to argue that we can locate the structure of the world system in any one particular human or tree any more than we can find it in any one particular nation, culture, religion or geographical center. Here, I am not arguing merely that we turn the world system on its head and start with its parts. Rather, I will argue that the structure of any system involving humans and the natural environment may well correspond to the structure and activities of its elements.
Let us imagine Columbus. Frank gives due notice to the fact that Columbus' ambitions for exploration were inspired by his awareness of the riches of the East and of Europe's backwardness relative to Asia. One can argue that the structure of the global economy and the peripheral position of Europe in it was itself the incentive that pushed Columbus to find new and more direct routes to the riches of the East and thus conclude that structure defines the movements of its parts. But then, Columbus had to be aware of that structure first. Moreover, Columbus did not have to be aware of the whole structure. He only had to be conscious of part of the structure to initiate an event that would then make a group of people from a particular region of the world to be more and more aware of the structure of the whole and subsequently gained increasing control of the dynamics and of the very structure of the whole world economy. Even Kuhn, in his discussion of paradigmatic shifts in science, insisted that science cannot be entirely directed by impersonal logic but also by the interests and intentions of the scientists.
The question to ask then is not whether the whole determines the parts or vice-versa. It cannot be an either-or proposition since the whole is more than the sum of its parts and living parts have some properties that cannot always be contained within the whole. The philosophy of science many times had to contend with the problem of the scientist looking on its object of study from the outside. This becomes more problematic in the social sciences where the fundamental element of the systems studied involves individuals who do not necessarily think and act according to the rules of the system they are in. Thus, there is always the possibility that, for any human system at some point in its evolution and development, there will be at least one individual in the system who chooses to get out of it, take stock of the system and propose either to broaden or reform the system or to demolish the old system altogether and institute a new one. I am not arguing that the individual can change a whole system by dint of his own free will but I do argue that we should give due consideration to the role of leaders, elites, and minorities in determining broad structures like world systems without getting mired in our exasperation with self-serving individualism. I will argue that this should be done not within any framework of categories such as nationality, culture, religion or geographical location but in terms of humanness, which is the common element across all nations, cultures and religions. Here, one can visualize the unity of the whole meeting the unity of the parts and encompassing the diversity within.