World systems theory was an important influence in the anthropology of *development and *polit-ical economy in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on the writings of André Gundar Frank and Fernand Braudel, world systems theory is most clearly laid out in the work of the economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein. In brief, Wallerstein’s (1974, 1980) thesis is that the *capitalist world system originated in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, leading to the creation of a global market and global division of labour divided between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ zones, each characterized by their own form of labour organization. Relations between these zones are marked by unequal *exchange, with capital intensive goods produced at the core being indirectly exchanged for labour intensive goods produced at the periphery. Capitalism itself has expanded on the basis of this unequal exchange, which has led to the underdevelopment of periphery zones.
The tendency to gloss over historical and cultural variation within these zones has been the main thrust of anthropological critiques of Wallerstein. Rather than elaborating on the system itself, anthropologists have tended to look at the impact of the system on peripheral and semi-peripheral peoples, and how their situation has been transformed through their relation with the core. In doing so they have criticized another aspect of Wallerstein’s argument, his tendency to see peripheral peoples as passive in the face of the expansion of capitalism. Ethnographic work suggests that rather than being passive, peoples on the periphery have offered their own forms of *resistance, as well as appropriated goods from the core frequently in novel and imaginative ways. Thus whilst peripheral peoples have been transformed by the world system, it is also the case that certain aspects of the world system have been transformed by its encounter with peripheral peoples.
Although anthropological critiques of Wallerstein’s thesis are various, its influence is to be found in a number of works ranging in scale from Eric Wolf s monumental Europe and the People Without History (1982) to more micro-focused ethnographic studies on places as different as Sicily and Sumatra. Whilst many of these studies grew out of Marxist-inspired analyses of political economy in the 1970s, anthropological interest in the effects of externally introduced economic processes goes back at least to the work of the †Manchester school in the Central African copperbelt. The tendency of some studies in the 1970s to become mired in arguments about multiple versus unitary *modes of production and their articulation has been avoided by the more historically attuned anthropology that emerged in the 1980s. This covered similar ground; most notably Mintz’s (1985) history of sugar, along with various studies focusing on the expansion of colonialism in the Pacific (Sahlins 1988; Thomas 1991).
In all this work there has been an attempt to understand the effects of global processes on local cultural systems, an inquiry which has taken a new tack in the 1990s with the study of †globalization (Featherstone 1990). Transnational corporations and digital communications systems are seen to be part of a process of global homogenization where ‘third cultures’ transcending local boundaries are emerging in this postmodern period of late capitalism. Whereas relations of production and exchange were often the focus of anthropological analyses of political economy and the world system, studies of global culture focus mainly on *consumption, whether of such goods as Coca Cola and Macdonalds or images and information on the internet. Yet it can be argued that whilst Wallerstein’s world systems theory ignored variation within core and periphery zones, global culture studies sometimes overlook inequalities in wealth among consumers, and unequal access to the communications systems said to be revolutionizing everyone’s life. Whilst some may argue for the globalization of culture and global homogenization, few would argue for the homogenization of wealth; for every person creatively ‘appropriating’ soft drinks and hamburgers there are countless others for whom globalization means the thwarted desires of window shopping.
