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New Perspectives In History And Geography. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by Joaquina Pires-O'Brien

World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change. Robert A. Denemark et al, editors. Routledge. [pound]50.00 h.b./[pound]16.99 p.b. 345 pages. ISBN 0-415-23276-7 h.b. and 0-415-23277-5 p.b. Development Geography Rupert Hodder. Routledge. [pound]40.00 h.b. and [pound]13.99 p.b. 186 pages. ISBN 0415-14210-5 h.b. and 0-415-14211-3 p.b.

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The movement towards a humanocentric history started during the 1970s when Social Science academics began to question the three and a half thousand years of world history and the commonly accepted views of it. The new book, World System History, has formally instigated the rewriting of world history in order to demonstrate that a number of contemporary themes such as globalisation and capitalism have actually been round for longer than one might think. The book's chapters were papers presented by specialists from various areas of knowledge at a 1995 conference hosted by the University of Lund in Sweden. Explaining the motivation for the book, Andre Gunder Frank of the University of Amsterdam, and Barry K. Gills of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne criticise the major works in economic history for their European and/or Western bias. They provide evidence of the transfer of surplus between zones of the world system in ancient, pre-modern and modern times to support the idea that a world economy has existed for far longer than presupposed. To them, language can be used to reconstruct systems, and such a 'structuralist' approach can reveal themes, continuities and even patterns, the knowledge of which could help 'to rechannel the impulses of rebellion so prevalent in the present world crisis in a more positive direction'.

One of the questions that comes to mind is why historians have taken this long to replace the archaic eurocentric world history with a humanocentric one. Andrew Sherratt attempts to answer this question in the chapter 'Envisioning global change: a long-term perspective'. In his words, 'Each generation has a fresh opportunity to understand the past, by perceiving it from a unique standpoint: that of the present'. Using a diagrammatic model to represent the eight thousand years of history Mr Sherratt shows how the traditional core-periphery expansion of the world system appears to be deterministic, and that by changing the scales, patterns appear of cyclical upturns and downturns.

Up to the 1970s traditional studies of world systems cultivated the difference between 'the West and the Rest', and few academics believed that there were similarities between ancient and modern economies. The development of the idea of continuity within the world system is reviewed by Jonathan Friedman, while Kajsa Ekholem discusses the origin of the ancient city-estates of Mesopotamia and the transition from a one-level to a two-level system between the periods, Ubaid (4500-3500 BC) and Uruk (3500-3000 BC), pointing out that archaeological information was used about the period Ubaid and most of Uruk since writing did not appear until the Late Uruk. In a chapter entitled State and Economy in Ancient Egypt David Warbuton reviews the work of the economist, John Maynard Keynes, who used many examples of the Egyptian economy that parallel modern economy, such as the building of pyramids, tombs and temples as a form of state intervention which stimulates the economy.

Each period of time is characterised by the ideas espoused at that time and these ideas compared with similar ones of the past. However, ideas, including the most brilliant ones of the great ages, travel slowly within the academic elites. Many academic disciplines and sub-disciplinary areas are insulated from one another by their different perception of reality. When scholars from two or more disciplines get together not only do they exchange ideas but they create the right condition for new ideas to emerge. Although such a structural approach can be attained by combining ideas from the disciplines of anthropology, human geography and history it is also dependant on asking the right philosophical questions.

World System History analyses a set of ideas about human interaction as far back as possible, with most contributors acknowledging at least five thousand years of historical record. The book is organised into four parts. The first part discusses four principles and perspectives, whilst the second deals with case studies that illustrate the key processes discussed in the first. The third part looks at the global historical macroprocesses of information, war and urbanisation. Lastly, part four attempts to sum up what has been accomplished regarding the proposed project of a world system history and to foretell where it can go in the future. World System History is not merely innovative and stimulating but is a positive manifesto towards cultural understanding and tolerance.

During the second half of the twentieth century there have been many attempts to explain why some countries developed whilst others remained in poverty. In Development Geography, Hupert Hodder reviews some of the most acclaimed approaches to development and exposes examples that are contradictory to each one. His intention is to warn against the tunnel-vision resulting from limiting one's view to the theory of the moment and to show that there is no straight-forward formula to promote development.

New Perspectives In History And Geography. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by Joaquina Pires-O'Brien

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